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Veal Soup

A clear veal broth thickened with a butter and flour roux, seasoned with white pepper, salt, mace, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the veal in a stew pan with the water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Let it simmer until reduced to 2 quarts.

  5. Strain the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Season the broth with white pepper, salt, mace, and lemon juice.

  2. Knead the flour with the butter.

  3. Stir the roux into the broth to thicken.

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the broth body and richness.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the broth when kneaded with butter into a roux and stirred in.
Butter
Carries the flour into a roux, adding fat and smooth richness to the thickened broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich veal broth.

The step that matters

Stir the roux into the broth to thicken. Flour clumps if added raw or unevenly. Kneading it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse and thicken smoothly when stirred into hot broth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mace, lemon, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mace, lemon, flour, 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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