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Soup

White Sours

A thickened white soup made with cream, egg, almonds, spices, white wine, celery, and a thickening agent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 485 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

White Sours

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine cream, egg, almonds, spices, white wine, celery, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Prepare the thickening by mixing bread, arrowroot, flour, or mashed vegetables.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the thickening to the mixture and stir well.

  2. Heat the mixture in a saucepan until warmed through, ensuring it does not boil.

  3. Serve hot, ensuring the soup is not cold.

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. Almond + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

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

  4. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. White wine + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Egg
Helps bind and thicken the soup as it warms.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty flavor to the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the cream.
Thickening
Starch or mashed vegetables absorb liquid and give the soup its body.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Boiling can curdle the egg and cream mixture and cause it to separate, so it should only be warmed gently until heated through.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, almond, white wine, celery, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, almond, white wine, celery, bread. 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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Stock 28Swiss 18Westerfield 14Veal 5Rich 4Plain 3 See all 83 →

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