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Dessert

Cranberry Soup

A warm soup made from cranberry sauce, gingerbread or ginger snaps, salt, sugar, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and ginger work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Cranberry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the cranberry sauce and soaked gingerbread or ginger snaps.

  2. Add salt and sugar to taste.

  3. Stir in the dissolved cornstarch.

  4. Boil the mixture for a while.

  5. Serve hot with toast, crackers, or breadsticks.

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. Cranberry + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sauce + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cranberry + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Cranberry sauce
Provides the main fruit body, tartness and sweetness that form the soup's base.
Gingerbread or ginger snaps
Soaked and added to contribute spice flavour and some body to the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, slightly viscous soup when boiled.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved cornstarch. Cornstarch must be fully dissolved in cold water before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens only once it is heated and boiled, so the mixture needs to boil after it is added to thicken properly.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, ginger, 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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