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Bread Soup

Bread Soup is a simple soup made with bread, onion, nutmeg, salt, pepper, water, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the chopped onion in a pan until brown.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the bread in equal parts water and milk.

  2. Add the fried onion, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the boiling mixture.

  3. Once the bread is tender, rub the mixture through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan, bring to a boil, 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Thickens the soup as it softens and breaks down in the liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the soup.
Onion
Browning in the pan adds savoury, sweet depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. The bread must be fully tender before sieving, or the soup will be lumpy and grainy. Pressing it through a sieve breaks down the remaining bread particles for a smooth texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, pepper, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, pepper, milk. 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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