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Cherry Soup

A sweet and spiced cherry soup with small egg and breadcrumb balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cherry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cherry broth

  1. In a pot, combine cherries, lemon peel, cloves, cinnamon, and water. Boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add sugar and lemon juice to taste.

Shape the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, whisk eggs, butter, bread crumbs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to form a dough.

  2. Butter your hands and shape the dough into small balls, about the size of hazelnuts.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the balls in the strained cherry soup for 7 to 10 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the main flavor and body of the soup as they cook down in the water.
Eggs
Bind the dough so the balls hold their shape while boiling.
Zwieback or bread crumbs
Add bulk to the dough and help absorb moisture so the balls set firmly.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.

The step that matters

Boiling the dough balls. Dough balls cooked in simmering soup can break apart if the liquid boils too hard. A gentle simmer lets the eggs and crumbs set so the balls stay intact.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, cinnamon, sugar, egg, butter, bread, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, sugar, egg, butter, bread, nutmeg. 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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