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Dessert

Sweet-potato Soup

A soup made from sweet potatoes, pine kernels, onion, celery seed, olive oil, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 ↓

Sweet-potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until done, then peel and mash them through a sieve.

  2. Dissolve the pine kernels in hot water in a pot.

Make the soup

  1. Add the grated onion, salt, and celery seed to the pot and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the soup and mix in the mashed sweet potatoes.

  3. Return the mixture to the fire, add olive oil and cayenne pepper, and boil for a few minutes before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Pine + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sweet potato + pinetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sweet potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the soup, giving body, starch and a smooth, thick texture when mashed.
Pine kernels
Dissolved in the hot water to add richness and body to the broth.
Olive oil
Adds fat, which carries flavour and gives the soup a smoother mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic flavour as it cooks into the broth.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the fire, add olive oil and cayenne pepper, and boil for a few minutes before serving.. Oil and cayenne are added at the end; boiling briefly blends the fat into the soup and mellows the raw heat of the pepper, so the flavour is even rather than sharp or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, pine, celery, olive, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, pine, celery, olive, 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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