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Veal Soup

A soup made with veal, water, macaroni, butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and optional onions or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine 3 pounds of veal and 4 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil ¼ pound of macaroni in a separate dish in enough water to cover it until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

  3. Stir in a little butter and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the macaroni and its cooking water to the veal stock.

  2. Optionally, add onions or celery for flavor.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Gives the soup its main meaty flavor and body as it simmers in the water.
Macaroni
Adds starch and bulk, making the soup more filling and substantial.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper. 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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