Name: Brod Suppe — Bread Soup
Ingredients: approved vegetables and herbs; 2 tablespoons butter; water; toasted slices of brown or white bread; fresh parsley, minced; chives, minced; 2 eggs; salt; pepper

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Brod Suppe — Bread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Wash and cut up the vegetables and herbs.
In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the vegetables.
Cover and let them stew in their own steam until tender.

Make the soup

Add water and toasted bread, then let it boil for a few minutes.
Stir in minced parsley and chives.

Serve

Beat the eggs in a tureen, then add salt and pepper to the beaten eggs.
Serve the soup over the eggs.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,885 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Fat that softens the vegetables and carries their flavour as they stew.
Toasted bread: Absorbs the liquid and gives the soup body and a toasted, savoury taste.
Eggs: Beaten raw in the tureen, then the hot soup is poured over them to cook gently and enrich the broth.
Approved vegetables and herbs: Provide the main flavour and aroma of the soup as they stew in their own steam.

Swap the chive

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

Shallotfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Chivethe original
Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, parsley, egg, 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.