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Cereal Soup

A thickened soup made with semolina, potato flour, milk, vegetable stock, mace, nutmeg, eggs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cereal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring the vegetable stock to a boil.

  2. Sprinkle in the crushed semolina while stirring continuously, as you would for porridge.

  3. Once the soup is clear, add the mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

Thicken the milk

  1. Thicken the milk with the potato flour.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Boil the milk.

  4. Slowly add the egg yolks, stirring until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the thickened milk into a tureen.

  2. Add the boiling soup.

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. Semolina + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Semolina
Swells as it cooks in the stock, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Potato flour
Thickens the milk, giving it a smooth, cohesive body.
Eggs
Thicken the milk as their proteins set with gentle heat, and add richness.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the potato flour and egg yolks thicken.
Vegetable stock
Provides the savory liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Slowly add the egg yolks, stirring until thickened. Egg proteins set at around 160°F to 180°F. If the yolks go in too fast or the milk is too hot, they scramble into lumps instead of thickening the milk smoothly. Adding them slowly while stirring tempers them gradually.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (semolina, potato, flour, milk, nutmeg, egg, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against semolina, potato, flour, milk, nutmeg, egg, pepper. 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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