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Caper Soup

A savory soup made with water, milk, butter, wheatmeal, capers, eggs, lemon, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Caper Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the water, milk, and butter with seasoning to taste.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the wheatmeal rubbed smooth with a little milk.

  3. Chop the capers and add them to the soup, cooking gently for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, beat the eggs, and carefully add them to the soup to avoid curdling.

  2. Add the juice of half a lemon, reheat the soup 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs added off the heat thicken the soup gently and give it a silky body.
Fine wheatmeal
Starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the soup.
Capers
Their briny, sharp flavour seasons the soup.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the rich soup.
Milk
Adds richness and body to the soup base.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. If the eggs go into a hot or boiling soup, they can scramble and curdle. Removing the pan from the heat and adding them carefully lets them thicken smoothly. Reheating without boiling keeps the egg mixture from separating.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, egg, butter, 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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