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Dessert

A Combined Fruit Soup

A fruit soup made with sliced apples, strawberries, cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

A Combined Fruit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the sliced apples with cold water and add the strawberries.

  2. Steam until soft, then drain through a cheesecloth bag.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the mixture to the stove and add cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and tapioca.

  2. Boil until the tapioca is clear.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a clear, slightly gelled body.
Sour apples
Provide the main body of the soup and a tart flavour that balances the sugar.
Strawberries
Add fruity flavour and colour to the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until the tapioca is clear. Tapioca starch only thickens fully when it is heated enough to swell and turn clear. Stopping early leaves the soup thin, and the starch can taste raw or cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, sugar. 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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