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White Soup

A veal broth made with onions, mace, pepper, and salt, thickened with ground rice and finished with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Break up the shin of veal and soak it in cold water for about 2 hours.

  2. Put the veal in a pot with 4 quarts of cold water, onions, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil for about 5 hours, then strain and let it cool.

  4. Remove all the fat from the cooled broth.

Add rice and cream

  1. Mix the ground rice with water and stir until it boils.

  2. Add the rice mixture to the broth along with the cream, bring to a boil, and it's ready to serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Mace and pepper 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 shin
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Ground rice
Thickens the broth as its starch gelatinizes when boiled, giving it a fuller texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture that softens the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the cooled broth. Fat that is not skimmed while the broth is cool and set rises to the surface and would make the finished broth greasy. Chilling lets the fat solidify so it lifts off cleanly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, pepper, rice, cream. 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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