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White Soup

A veal broth flavored with mace, pepper, and salt, thickened with ground rice and finished with heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Soak the shin of veal in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil the veal in 4 quarts of water with the onion, mace, pepper, and salt for 5 hours.

  3. Strain the broth through a sieve and let it cool overnight.

  4. Remove the fat from the cooled broth using a cloth.

Thicken and finish

  1. Bring the broth back to a boil.

  2. Mix the ground rice with a little water and stir it into the boiling broth.

  3. Add the heavy cream and bring it to a boil again.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Ground rice
Thickens the broth as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the broth.
Shin of veal
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the ground rice. Ground rice must be mixed smoothly with a little cold water first and stirred into boiling broth. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and does not thicken evenly, since starch only swells and thickens properly when dispersed in liquid and heated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, pepper, rice, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, pepper, rice, 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.

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