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Rice Soup a LA Cardinal

A creamy rice soup with celery, onion, stock, and cream, served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Soup a LA Cardinal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in the stock with the onion, celery, and peppercorns until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt and cream, then reheat the soup.

  2. Serve with custard cut into fancy patterns.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Carolina rice
Breaks down during simmering, thickening the stock into a smooth body.
White stock
Provides the liquid base that cooks the rice and carries the soup's flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onion
Contributes savoury aromatic depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Cooked rice must be pushed fully through the sieve to give a smooth, thickened texture; leftover grains or skins leave the soup gritty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, celery, cream):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, celery, 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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