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White Soup Without Meat

A creamy vegetable soup made with milk, onion, turnip, celery, parsley, peppers, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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White Soup Without Meat

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, boil the onion, turnip, celery, parsley, bay leaves, and whole peppers in 1 quart of water for 8 hours until reduced to ½ pint.

  2. Strain the mixture and season with coarse sea salt.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the flour into the butter and thicken the soup, stirring until it boils.

  2. Add the milk and let it boil again.

  3. Pour the hot soup over the beaten egg, stirring well.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the creamy body and mild sweetness of the white soup.
Egg
Enriches the soup and thickens it gently when heated with the hot liquid.
Flour
Thickens the soup with butter as a roux, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping form the roux with flour.
Onion
Builds the savory aromatic base of the vegetable stock.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot soup over the egg. If the soup is added too quickly or is too hot without constant stirring, the egg can scramble instead of smoothly thickening the soup. Stirring well while pouring gently tempers the egg.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper, egg, butter. 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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