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Rhubarb Soup

A savory soup of rhubarb, ham, and butter simmered in consommé, finished with bread crumbs and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rhubarb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Peel and wash the rhubarb thoroughly.

  2. Blanch the rhubarb in hot water for 3 to 4 minutes, then drain it in a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the rhubarb, ham, and butter.

  2. Stew gently over low heat until the rhubarb is tender.

  3. Add the consommé and boil for about 15 minutes.

  4. Skim off all the fat.

  5. Stir in the bread crumbs.

  6. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  7. Pass the soup through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rhubarb + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart, bright flavour that defines the soup and softens into a pulp when stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour as the rhubarb stews.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the soup, supplying savoury depth.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup slightly and add body.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the stewed rhubarb.

The step that matters

Skim off all the fat. Fat from the ham and butter floats on the surface of the hot liquid and can make the soup greasy and heavy on the palate. Removing it before adding the bread crumbs and straining leaves a cleaner, lighter soup.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, bread, 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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