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Turkish Soup

A creamy rice soup made with stock, rice, egg yolks, cream, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Turkish Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turkish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in 4 quarts of water until soft.

  2. Heat the stock and rub the rice through a sieve into it, cooking until smooth.

Finish the soup

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add the cream to them.

  2. Remove the soup from the heat and add the egg mixture, salt, pepper, and parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries most of the soup's flavor.
Rice
Its starch breaks down and thickens the soup, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the soup as they gently set, adding silky body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the egg mixture before it meets the soup.

The step that matters

Add the egg mixture off the heat. Egg yolk proteins set at moderate temperatures, so if the soup is still boiling when the yolks go in, they can curdle into specks instead of thickening it smoothly. Removing the pan from the heat first keeps the texture silky.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, cream, 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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