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Semolina Soup

A warm soup made with milk, water, semolina, mace, cheese, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Semolina Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the semolina

  1. Bring the milk and water to a boil with the mace.

  2. Whisk in the semolina.

  3. Cook gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the mace.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cheese, butter, and seasoning.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Semolina
Starchy grain that thickens the liquid into a soft, porridge-like body as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness, giving the soup a richer, smoother base.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the soup a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Grated cheese
Melts into the soup, adding savoury flavour and extra richness.

The step that matters

Whisking in the semolina. Adding semolina while whisking disperses the grains before they swell, which prevents lumps. Starch thickens as it cooks, so the gentle simmer should be steady enough to keep the texture smooth.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, semolina, butter, cheese, 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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