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Convalescents* Soup

A vegetable soup with barley malt meal, nut cream, and tomato pulp, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Convalescents* Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash and slice the vegetables and add them with the parsley to the boiling water.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours or until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing out the juices but not the fiber.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the barley malt meal with some cooled broth to form a thin paste.

  2. Bring the remaining broth to a boil in a saucepan.

  3. Add the barley malt meal paste and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Break up the tomatoes and cook them slowly until they form a pulp, then strain to remove the skin and seeds.

  5. Add the tomato pulp to the soup.

  6. Mix the nut cream with a little water or cool broth to form a thin cream, stirring continuously.

  7. Add the nut cream to the soup, reheat gently without boiling, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley malt meal
Thickens the broth as its starch swells with heat, giving the soup body.
Nut cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh flavour, and their pulp adds body to the broth.
Celery
Builds the savoury base flavour of the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the nut cream. Nut cream can split or curdle if it boils, so it is thinned first and stirred in while the soup is only reheated gently and kept below boiling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, parsley, barley, malt, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, parsley, barley, malt, cream. 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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