Skip to main content
Main

White Soup

A clear stock-based soup thickened with butter, flour, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Prepare the stock by cutting up the onion and adding it to a large pot with the meat and celery seed or salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2-3 hours for chicken or 5-6 hours for veal.

  3. Strain carefully and remove all fat.

  4. Reheat the strained stock for 30 minutes before serving.

Thicken and finish the soup

  1. Season the soup with salt, pepper, and mace to taste.

  2. Cream the butter in a separate bowl and mix in the flour or corn-starch.

  3. Heat the cream in a saucepan until boiling.

  4. Gradually add the boiling cream to the butter and flour mixture while stirring.

  5. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the butter, flour, and cream mixture.

  6. Pour the mixture into the boiling soup and stir for 5 minutes before serving.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Meat
Gives the stock its body and savory flavor as it simmers for hours.
Butter
Adds richness and, with the flour, forms a smooth base that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and cream, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding body and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the boiling soup. Egg yolks can curdle if they get too hot too fast. Stirring the mixture gradually with hot liquid and keeping the soup from boiling hard helps it stay smooth and thickened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, celery, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, celery, pepper, butter, flour, cream. 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.

More white soup recipes

Stock 28Swiss 18Westerfield 14Veal 5Rich 4Plain 3 See all 83 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes