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Soup

Almond Soup

A soup made from fowl, lettuce, almonds, flour, butter, eggs, and stock, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Almond Soup

Why it works: Almond and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Almond Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the fowl and lettuce in the stock slowly.

  2. Simmer for 18 minutes.

  3. Remove the fowl from the pot.

  4. Cut off all the white meat from the fowl.

  5. Return the bones and trimmings to the pot with sugar and salt.

  6. Simmer for several hours.

  7. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Make the almond base

  1. Pound the white meat of the fowl with the almonds.

  2. Blend the mixture with the eggs beaten with cream.

  3. Strain the blended mixture through a coarse cloth.

Finish the soup

  1. Put the soup into a pot rubbed with garlic.

  2. Mix the flour and butter together. Combine the flour-butter mixture with the fowl mixture.

  3. Stir the combined mixture into the soup.

  4. Simmer the whole for 30 minutes.

  5. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Pounded into the soup to give body and a nutty, creamy texture.
Eggs
Beaten in to help bind and thicken the soup as it heats.
Baked flour
Combined with butter to thicken the soup and add body.
Butter
Mixed with the flour to add richness and smooth the thickening.
Fowl
Simmered to flavour the stock and provides the white meat pounded into the soup.
Lettuce
Simmered in the stock to add a mild, fresh vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Blend the eggs and cream into the almond mixture. Eggs thicken when heated, so the mixture must be added gently and kept below a hard boil to avoid curdling or a grainy texture. Straining afterward removes any lumps.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, cream, flour, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, cream, flour, sugar, egg, butter. 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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