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Drink

Cereal Soup

A simple soup made by soaking cereal in liquid, flavored with fruit juice or vegetables, and seasoned with cayenne pepper, celery salt, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cereal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour enough water or sweet milk over the cereal to cover it completely.

  2. Let it stand for 2 or more hours.

Make the soup

  1. Add the juice of fruits or finely chopped vegetables for flavor.

  2. Thin the mixture with milk to achieve a soup consistency.

  3. Before serving, add a dash of cayenne pepper, celery salt, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Do not mix fruits with vegetables for best results.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Rolled or crushed grain or cereal
Forms the body of the soup and thickens as it soaks and softens.
Fruit juice or finely chopped vegetables
Adds flavor and natural sweetness or acidity to the soup.
Milk
Thins the mixture to a soupy consistency and adds creaminess.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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