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An Excellent White Soup

A clear soup made from mutton, veal, bacon, onions, mace, white pepper, lemon peel, and milk, finished with macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

An Excellent White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the mutton, veal, shank-bones, gammon, onions, mace, white pepper, lemon peel, and water in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until the meat falls apart.

  3. Strain the soup through a coarse sieve.

  4. Mix the ground rice smoothly with the new milk, then stir the rice-milk mixture into the soup.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Soak the macaroni in cold water for one hour.

  2. Place the soaked macaroni in a saucepan and pour the soup over the macaroni.

  3. Stir the combined soup and macaroni for ten minutes.

  4. Cover the saucepan and boil for half an hour.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Gives the soup its meaty body and rich flavour as it simmers.
Ground rice
Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks, giving it a smoother body.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and starch that absorbs some broth and softens in the soup.
New milk
Adds richness and a mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the ground rice with milk before adding it to the soup. Ground rice dropped into hot liquid clumps and forms lumps, because its starch gelatinises on contact before it can disperse. Blending it smoothly with cold milk first lets the starch spread evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, veal, onion, mace, lemon, rice, milk):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, veal, onion, mace, lemon, rice, milk. 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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