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White Soup with Almonds

A creamy veal-based soup flavored with almond paste, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Soup with Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the pounded almonds with a little water to prevent oiliness.

  2. In a saucepan, rub the butter with the flour until smooth.

  3. Put the cream over boiling water with the lemon rind.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the veal jelly on the stove until hot, then gradually pour it into the cream.

  2. Add the almond paste, butter‑flour mixture, white pepper, salt, and mace to the soup.

  3. Let it simmer for 15 minutes, then remove the lemon rind before serving.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the nutty flavour and body that give the soup its characteristic creamy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Veal jelly
Supplies the savoury meaty base and gelatin that gives the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base of the flour roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the butter and absorbing liquid as it heats.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter with the flour until smooth. Mixing flour thoroughly into fat before adding liquid prevents lumps, because flour clumps when it meets liquid without being coated in fat first.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, almond, butter, flour, mace, lemon. 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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