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Tapioca Soup

A clear soup made with stock, celery, parsley, egg whites, egg shells, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tapioca Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare a strong soup stock, strain it, and let it cool.

  2. Skim off all fatty substances and season with salt and pepper.

Clarify the stock

  1. Add celery, parsley, and beaten egg whites to the stock, along with crumbled egg shells.

  2. Heat the mixture on the range, stirring often to prevent burning.

  3. Allow it to boil gently for 5 minutes, then strain through a napkin into a clean saucepan.

Finish the soup

  1. Add tapioca to the stock and boil for 40 minutes until ready to 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.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Egg whites
Bind to fine particles as they set, clarifying the stock for a clear broth.
Tapioca
Swells as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it a translucent, slightly chewy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture heats. Stirring often keeps the egg white and celery mixture from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give the stock a burnt taste and cloud the clarification.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, 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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