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Tapioca Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, stock, tapioca, eggs, and vegetables, flavored with herbs and spices.

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 flavouring

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

  2. Add the bag to the stock and bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the bag and squeeze it to extract flavor.

Cook the soup

  1. Sprinkle in the tapioca, stirring well, and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Heat the milk and cream in a bain-marie.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Gradually add the stock to the egg mixture, stirring continuously.

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

Tapioca
Swells as it cooks, thickening the soup into a light, smooth body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the soup when gently combined with the hot liquid.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the soup.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer texture and mouthfeel.
Stock
Supplies the main savoury liquid that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually add the stock to the egg mixture, stirring continuously. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding it slowly while stirring tempers the yolks so the soup becomes smooth and thick rather than lumpy.

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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