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Veal Pottage

A veal soup made with bone marrow, herbs, and vegetables, thickened with flour and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Pottage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut all the meat from the knuckle of veal and break the bone into 4‑5 pieces.

  2. Place the meat and bones in a stewpan with the onion, cloves, mace, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, and bacon rind.

  3. Pour 5 pints of cold water over the ingredients and bring to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface, then reduce heat and let it simmer gently.

  5. After sufficient boiling, strain the soup into a pan and let it cool overnight.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the fat from the top and take the jelly free from sediment.

  2. Boil the vegetables in the jelly until tender, then rub them through a fine sieve.

  3. Mix the vegetable pulp with the liquor.

  4. Stir in ½ tablespoon of flour mixed with ½ pint of cream or milk until smooth.

  5. Boil the soup for a few minutes, then add salt and pepper to taste, and 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Provides the meat and bones that build the flavour and gelatinous body of the stock.
Vegetables (celery, artichokes, or turnips)
Break down into the pulp that thickens and gives the soup body.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk and helps give the soup a smooth, velvety texture.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream. Flour mixed with cream or milk must be stirred until smooth before going into the hot soup, otherwise it clumps. Boiling briefly afterward cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, celery, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, celery, flour. 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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