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Apple Soup

A soup made from cooked apple, onion, water, butter, cornflour, seasoning, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Apple Soup

Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the apple.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook the apple and onion in the water until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to the saucepan, add butter, seasoning, and sugar.

  2. Thicken the soup with cornflour 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.

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. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apple
Provides the main body and flavour of the soup once cooked and puréed.
Onion
Adds savoury depth that balances the sweetness of the apple.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the puréed soup by swelling in liquid when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with cornflour. Cornflour must be cooked in the hot liquid to swell and thicken it. Adding it to cold liquid or boiling it too briefly can leave lumps or a thin soup with a starchy taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, butter):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter. 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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