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Soupe Blanche

A light white soup made with milk, water, flour, egg yolks, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and celery or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery 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 ↓

Soupe Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the water with celery or onion for flavoring.

  2. Remove the celery or onion from the water.

Make the soup

  1. Blend the flour with some cold milk in a separate bowl.

  2. Boil the milk and the flavored water together.

  3. Stir in the blended flour and cook until thickened.

  4. Add the egg yolks, salt, and pepper, mixing well 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add body and richness when stirred in.
New milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the blended flour and cook until thickened. Flour must be fully blended with cold milk first so it does not clump, and the mixture must cook long enough for the starch to swell and thicken the soup.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, 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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