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Soup

Cheap Rice Soup

A simple soup made with water, salt, onions, herbs, celery, carrots, rice, butter, flour, pepper, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cheap Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add salt, onions, sweet herbs, celery, and carrots.

  3. Boil gently for 1.5 to 2 hours, then strain the liquid.

  4. Let the broth cool, then for each quart, add 3-4 ounces of rice.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the soup slowly, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and the soup thickens.

  2. Season with pepper and stir in butter mixed with flour before serving.

  3. Optionally, add beaten eggs mixed with a little milk for richness.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 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

Rice
Swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour, and carries the flour into the soup smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with butter and stirred in.
Eggs
Enriches the soup and adds body when beaten eggs are stirred in.

The step that matters

Heating the soup slowly with the rice. Rice can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot if heated too fast. Slow heating with occasional stirring lets the grains soften evenly and the starch thicken the broth without sticking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, rice, butter, flour, pepper, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, rice, butter, flour, pepper, egg. 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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