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Plum Soup. No I

A soup made from rice and ripe plums, sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Soup. No I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice overnight.

  2. Boil the rice in 2 quarts of cold water until thoroughly done and pasty.

Make the plum puree

  1. Peel and stew the plums, then pass through a colander to remove the seeds.

Combine and serve

  1. Sweeten the plum puree to taste and add it to the rice paste.

  2. Add a little cinnamon, 1 clove, and a dash of nutmeg.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down while boiling to thicken the soup into a pasty body.
Plums
Provide the main fruit flavour and body once stewed and pureed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the plums.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice until thoroughly done and pasty. Starch in rice gelatinises and breaks down only with prolonged cooking in water. If the rice is undercooked, the soup stays grainy and fails to thicken into the smooth, pasty texture the recipe calls for.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg. 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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