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Ham and Veal Soup

A hearty soup made with ham, veal, carrots, onions, cabbage, mace, lemon juice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ham and Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the ham, veal, chopped vegetables, and water.

  2. Cook for four hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and cool it, then remove the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Pulp the vegetables through a colander and return them to the pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim for five minutes, seasoning with pepper.

  3. Stir in the flour mixture and boil for three minutes 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean ham
Lends savory, meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers for hours.
Lean veal
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth, giving body to the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body when pulped back into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly when stirred in and boiled.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour mixture and boil for three minutes. Flour mixed with cold water must be stirred in evenly and then boiled, because raw flour clumps when added to hot liquid and boiling is needed for the starch to thicken and lose its raw taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, carrot, onion, cabbage, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, carrot, onion, cabbage, lemon, 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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