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White Soup

A veal soup thickened with farina, enriched with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the veal and cut it into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a soup kettle, combine the veal, bones, turnip, carrot, onion, salt, peppercorns, farina, and cold water.

  2. Bring the mixture slowly to a boil, then let it simmer for four hours.

  3. Strain the soup and remove any fat.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg white with the egg yolks, then add the cream.

  2. Stir the egg and cream mixture into the soup and heat it nearly to boiling point.

  3. Serve at once.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides meat flavour and gelatin that gives the broth body as it simmers.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently heated into the broth.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the broth and rounding its flavour.
Farina
Lightly thickens the broth so it feels fuller in the mouth.

The step that matters

Heating the egg and cream mixture into the soup. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the soup gets too hot they can scramble and curdle. Heat it only until nearly boiling, stirring constantly, so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, egg, cream, onion. 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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