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Swiss White Soup

A veal and potato soup seasoned with parsley or celery, sweet milk, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Swiss White Soup

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Swiss White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut veal steaks into small pieces and place them in a pot with cold water over medium heat.

  2. Let the meat stew gently until partly tender.

  3. Add the potato and parsley or celery.

  4. When the meat is fully cooked, add salt, pepper, sweet milk, and butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the eggs and stir them rapidly into the boiling soup.

  2. Strain the soup to make it clear and serve.

  3. Optionally, use poached eggs instead of stirring in the eggs.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steaks
Provides the meat flavour and body of the broth as it stews.
Potato
Adds starch that gives the soup a slightly thicker, smoother body.
Eggs
Beaten eggs stirred into hot soup set into soft strands that enrich the texture.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the savoury broth.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten eggs into the soup. The soup must be boiling and the eggs stirred in rapidly so they set into fine strands rather than thick clumps. Hot liquid cooks the egg proteins on contact, so uneven stirring leaves lumps.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, pepper, milk, butter, 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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