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Vegetable Soups

A creamy soup of vegetable marrow, egg yolk, and grated coconut, seasoned with pepper and salt, served on toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,312 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Vegetable Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Trim and slice the vegetable marrow.

  2. Stew it in veal or fowl broth until nearly mashed.

  3. Press the marrow through a sieve.

  4. Add boiling cream and the yolk of egg when nearly cooked.

  5. Stir in grated cocoa-nut, white pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve on toasted sippets.

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. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Veal + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Cream + cocoatop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Vegetable marrow
Forms the bulk of the soup and breaks down into a smooth, thick base when stewed and sieved.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a silky body to the soup.
Yolk of egg
Thickens the soup slightly and adds richness when added near the end of cooking.
Veal or fowl broth
Provides the liquid for stewing and a savoury meat-based flavour.

The step that matters

Add the cream and yolk when nearly cooked. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can curdle if it boils. Adding the boiling cream and yolk near the end, with the soup no longer at a hard boil, keeps the texture smooth and glossy.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cream, egg, white pepper):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, egg, white 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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