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Peanut Soup

A soup made with peanuts, buttermilk, salt, sugar, meal, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Peanut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and grate the peanuts.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, heat the buttermilk over moderate heat, stirring constantly until it boils.

  2. Pour the boiling buttermilk over the grated peanuts.

  3. Add salt, sugar, and meal, then let it boil for 20 minutes, stirring continuously.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + buttermilktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together61 recipes

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

  4. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

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

  5. Peanut + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Peanuts
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the soup.
Buttermilk
Forms the liquid base and adds gentle acidity and tang.
Egg yolks
Added off the heat to enrich and thicken the soup slightly.
Meal
Helps thicken the soup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stirring the buttermilk as it heats. Buttermilk can scorch and curdle on the bottom of the pot if it is not stirred constantly, so keep it moving until it boils.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, sugar, egg. 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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