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B Spring Fruit Soup

A soup made with rhubarb, onions, carrot, ham, butter, consommé, and bread crumbs, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

B Spring Fruit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Peel and wash the rhubarb stalks.

  2. Blanch the rhubarb in water for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Drain the rhubarb in a sieve and place it in a stew pan.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sliced onions, carrot, ham, and butter to the pan.

  2. Stew gently over low heat until tender.

  3. Pour in the consommé and add the bread crumbs.

  4. Boil for about 15 minutes.

  5. Skim off all the fat, season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  6. Pass the soup through a fine sieve and serve with fried bread.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb stalks
Provides the main body and tart flavour of the soup once stewed and passed through a sieve.
Onions
Softened by gentle stewing to add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavour of the other ingredients.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup as they boil, giving it a fuller body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping to soften the vegetables and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Skim off all the fat. Fat rises to the surface as the soup simmers and can make the finished soup greasy and heavy on the palate. Removing it before seasoning keeps the texture clean and lets the seasoning taste right.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, ham, butter, bread, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, ham, butter, bread, 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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