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Almond Soup

A soup made from sweet and bitter almonds, egg yolks, and stock, thickened with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Almond Soup

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Make your stock using veal or an old fowl.

  2. In a mortar, combine sweet almonds, a few bitter almonds, egg yolks, and white pepper; pound until very fine.

  3. Add the almond mixture to the stock and let it simmer gently, adding cold broth as it reduces.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Thicken with butter kneaded in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Pounded into a fine paste, they give the soup its body and nutty, almond flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their richness adds fat and a smooth, creamy texture to the pounded mixture.
Butter and flour
Kneaded together, they thicken the strained soup into a smoother, heavier consistency.
Good cream
Stirred in at the end, it adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the almond mixture. Boiling vigorously can cause the fine almond solids and cream-like emulsion to separate or turn grainy, and reduce the soup unevenly. A gentle simmer keeps the texture smooth while adding cold broth as it reduces.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, veal, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, veal, butter, flour, cream. 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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