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Veal Soup

A clear soup made with veal, rice, celery root, parsley root, and greens, thickened with a roux and flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the veal in cold water.

  2. Place the veal in a soup kettle with enough cold water to cover it.

  3. Skim the surface just before it begins to boil.

  4. Cover the kettle and simmer slowly for 2.5 hours.

  5. After 30 minutes, add the rice, celery root, parsley root, and soup greens.

Make the roux and finish

  1. Once the soup has boiled for 2.5 hours, remove all the meat.

  2. Heat the flour in a skillet until it turns yellow (not brown).

  3. Add the butter and stir in a small ladle of hot water.

  4. Boil until thickened like cream.

  5. Add the roux to the soup.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  8. Add nutmeg.

  9. 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of veal
Provides the meat and flavor that make the broth rich.
Flour
Toasted into a roux, it thickens the soup to a creamy body.
Butter
Combined with the flour to form the roux, adding richness to the thickened soup.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, adding body to the broth.
Celery root
Adds a mild, earthy celery flavor to the soup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Toasting the flour to yellow, not brown. Flour must be cooked only until it turns yellow. Browning it gives a nutty, toasted color and flavor that changes the soup, and the roux must be stirred smoothly into the hot broth so it thickens without lumps.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, rice, parsley, flour, butter, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, rice, parsley, flour, butter, nutmeg, 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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