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Cider Soup

A sweet soup made with cider, water, raisins, lemon, and grated stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cider Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the cider and water in a large pot.

  2. Add the soaked raisins, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Stir in the grated bread.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cider + raisintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together588 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Grated graham or whole wheat bread
Thickens the soup as it soaks, giving it a body and a hearty texture.
Cider
Forms the liquid base and provides the main apple flavor.
Seedless raisins
Add plump sweetness and chew as they rehydrate in the soup.

The step that matters

Standing time with the bread. The bread needs the full two hours to absorb liquid and swell. Stirring occasionally keeps it from clumping at the bottom, so the soup thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, raisin, sugar, bread):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, raisin, sugar, bread. 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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