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Soup

Tapioca Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, stock, tapioca, eggs, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavoring

  1. Put the chopped celery, onion, grated carrot, grated coconut, mignonette pepper, and herbs into a muslin bag and tie it up.

  2. Place the bag in the stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes, then remove the bag and squeeze it to extract flavor.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pot, combine the milk, stock, tapioca, cream, salt, pepper, and essence of nutmeg.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the eggs and stir well before serving.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a creamy body.
Tapioca
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and gelatinizes during cooking.
Eggs
Add richness and body, setting slightly when stirred into the hot soup.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the soup a rounder, silkier texture.
Stock
Provides the savory base and carries the flavor of the simmered vegetables.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs thicken when heated, so they can curdle or turn grainy if the soup is at a hard boil. Stirring well while adding them keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, pepper, nutmeg, egg, celery, carrot. 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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