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Apple Soup

A soup made from stewed apples in mutton or beef broth, flavored with ginger and pepper, served hot with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Apple Soup

Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Apple Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Clear the fat from the broth and strain it through a fine sieve.

  2. Bring the broth to a boil and add the apples.

Cook and season

  1. Stew the apples gently until they become a smooth pulp, about 25 to 40 minutes.

  2. Press the mixture through a strainer.

  3. Stir in the ginger and pepper, then simmer for 2 minutes.

  4. Skim the soup and serve it hot with boiled rice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  2. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Pudding apples
Break down into a smooth pulp that thickens the soup and gives it body and sweetness.
Mutton broth, beef stock, or bouillon
Forms the savoury base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Powdered ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that stands out against the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples gently. Apples cooked too hard can scorch on the bottom of the pan or break into uneven pieces before they soften. Gentle heat lets them collapse evenly into a smooth pulp that presses through the strainer cleanly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ginger, pepper, rice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ginger, pepper, rice. 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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