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Wine Soup

A sweet soup made with sago, raisins, wine, vanilla, and toasted bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Wine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil in a pot.

  2. Rinse the sago in cold water several times, then add it to the boiling water.

  3. Add the cinnamon, lemon slices, and raisins to the pot.

  4. Boil until the sago is clear and the raisins are tender.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar, wine, and vanilla.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add toasted bread cubes that have been lightly buttered.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sago
Starch that thickens the broth and turns clear and tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine and lemon.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the broth.
Raisins
Soften in the hot liquid and add concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until the sago is clear. Sago must cook fully in boiling liquid to lose its starchy core and turn translucent. Undercooked sago stays opaque and chalky, while overcooking can make it gluey as the starch keeps swelling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, raisin, vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, raisin, vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, 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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