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The White Soup of Gover

A creamy veal stock soup with onions, celery, leeks, pumpkin, carrots, flour, cream, salt, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The White Soup of Gover

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Warm the veal stock in a double saucepan.

  2. In a single saucepan, sauté the chopped onion, celery, leeks, pumpkin, and carrots with enough top fat to form a pulp, stirring for 10 minutes without burning.

  3. Add flour gradually to form a pulpy paste, stirring briskly for 5 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Combine the vegetable mixture with the hot veal stock and let it stew slowly in boiling water for 1.5 hours, stirring frequently.

  2. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve into a clean double saucepan.

  3. Add salt, herbs, and cream, stirring well until hot.

  4. Adjust seasoning and add more cream if desired 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Veal stock
Provides the main liquid and meaty savoury body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the vegetable pulp into a paste that gives the soup body.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour while breaking down to flavour and thicken the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel at the end.
Pumpkin
Breaks down during stewing to add body, sweetness and colour.

The step that matters

Forming the pulpy paste with flour. Flour must be stirred in gradually and briskly so it cooks into the vegetables without lumps; cooking it fully removes raw starch taste and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, celery, leek, carrot, flour, cream. 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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