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Almond Soup

A creamy soup made from sweet and bitter almonds, milk, cream, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Boil the almonds in the stock with the peppercorns, onion, and celery for one hour.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve using the back of a wooden spoon.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter without browning it.

  2. Add the flour to the butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in the milk and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Add the almond stock and salt, then reheat.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream into a tureen and add the soup.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the soup once pounded and sieved.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharper, more intense almond aroma that deepens the flavour.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked with the butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, thickened by the roux.
Cream
Enriches the soup with fat and a silky texture when poured into the tureen.

The step that matters

Heat the butter without browning it. Browned butter gives the roux a toasted, darker flavour and colour that would clash with the delicate almond taste, and a roux cooked too hot can scorch and turn bitter.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, cream, butter, onion, flour. 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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