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Yam Soup

A soup made with peeled yam, onion, bacon rind, and milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Yam and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Yam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Cut the yam into pieces and stir it into the melted dripping for 10 minutes without browning.

  3. Add the water, onion, and bacon rind, then bring to a boil.

  4. As the yam softens, mash it up.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  6. Add the milk, nutmeg, and season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread slices.

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. Yam + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Yam + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Yam + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Yam
Forms the body of the soup and thickens it as it softens and breaks down.
Dripping
Carries flavour and adds richness to the soup as the yam cooks in it.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the yam in the dripping without browning. Stirring the yam in melted fat for 10 minutes without browning lets it soften gently. Browning would add bitter, roasted flavours that do not suit a smooth, mild soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against yam, pepper, nutmeg, 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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