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Turkish Soup

A creamy soup made with white stock, cream, egg yolks, pepper, and sago or tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Turkish Soup

Why it works: Cream and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Turkish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Bring the white stock to a boil.

  2. Soak the sago in water for 30 minutes, then add it to the boiling stock.

  3. Cook the sago for 10 minutes.

Enrich with egg and cream

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup of the hot soup to the egg and cream mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Return the mixture to the stove and cook for a few minutes, stirring continuously.

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. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they cook gently with the hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Sago
Swells as it cooks, giving the soup body and a slightly thick texture.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg yolks. Adding hot soup to the yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding the hot liquid gradually while stirring constantly raises the yolks' temperature gently so they thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

“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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