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Another White Soup

A light soup made with stock, milk, egg yolks, almonds, and cayenne pepper, served over French roll slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,800 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Another White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the thickening

  1. Boil the crumb of a roll in ½ cup of milk.

  2. In a mortar, beat the yolks of 6 hard-boiled eggs with 3 ounces of almonds and a little cayenne pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the egg mixture to the stock and stir well.

  2. Serve over slices of French roll in a tureen.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stock
Forms the main liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Roll crumb
Soaks up liquid and swells, giving the soup body and a light thickness.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mash into a rich paste that enriches the stock and adds body.
Almonds
Add fat and a nutty flavor, and help thicken the ground mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the stock. Stirring well spreads the ground yolk and almond paste evenly through the liquid. Without thorough mixing, the paste can clump and leave the soup unevenly thickened and grainy.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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