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Tapioca Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with tapioca, stock, cream, onion, celery, butter, mace, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca and soak it overnight in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, cook the soaked tapioca and white stock gently for one hour.

  2. In another pot, cook the chopped onion and celery with the cream or milk and mace for twenty minutes.

  3. Strain the onion and celery mixture into the pot with tapioca and stock.

  4. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the butter to the soup.

  6. Serve the soup.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as its starch gelatinizes during long gentle cooking, giving body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the soaked tapioca gently for one hour. Tapioca thickens only when its starch fully gelatinizes in hot liquid. Cooking it too hard can scorch the bottom of the pot or break down the starch unevenly, so a gentle simmer with occasional stirring gives an even, smooth body.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, onion, celery, butter, 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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