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White Soup

A veal broth thickened with vermicelli, egg yolks, and cream, seasoned with salt, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the veal in water until the meat is tender and the flavor is extracted.

  2. Strain and skim the broth, letting it cool to remove grease more effectively.

  3. Boil the vermicelli until tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the cooked vermicelli to the soup just before serving.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the cream.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and mace to the mixture.

  4. Stir the egg and cream mixture into the boiling soup quickly, ensuring it does not boil after adding 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.

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 + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and mace 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

Veal knuckle or shank
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and savoriness.
Vermicelli
Adds starchy body and chew to the soup as it is eaten.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and broth gently as they set with heat, giving a richer texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the broth and carrying the flavor of the mace.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks curdle and turn grainy if the soup boils after they go in. Stirring quickly into the hot, not boiling, broth distributes the heat evenly so the yolks thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, cream, 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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