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White Soup

A light soup made with white stock, milk, butter, flour, and optional chicken, veal, celery, or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Ronald · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Soup

serves 4 (yields one quart)

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put one pint of milk or cream into a double boiler.

  2. Add one pint of white stock to the double boiler.

  3. Make a white roux by cooking together one tablespoonful of butter and one tablespoonful of flour, but do not brown it.

  4. Dilute the roux to smoothness with a little cold milk before adding it to the soup.

  5. Let the mixture come to a boil.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  7. Strain the soup into a tureen.

Add extras and serve

  1. Add one tablespoonful or more of diced chicken breast, veal, celery, or rice.

  2. If desired, add two or more of these ingredients, and sprinkle the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, pressed through a sieve, over the top.

  3. Serve; this quantity yields one quart of soup, enough for four people.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

712Calories
21 gProtein
21 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Soupnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Milk
Forms the creamy, mild body of the soup as the base liquid.
White stock
Provides the main savory liquid that gives the soup its flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour in the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as the starch in the roux swells with heat.

The step that matters

Making the white roux. Cooking butter and flour together without browning gives a pale, smooth thickener. If it browns, the soup takes on colour and a nutty taste. Diluting it with cold milk before adding helps prevent lumps.

“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.

More white soup recipes

Stock 28Swiss 18Westerfield 14Veal 5Rich 4Plain 3 See all 83 →

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