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Good Veal Soup

A veal soup made by simmering a knuckle of veal with bones, ham or bacon, rice, spices, vegetables, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Good Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Gently boil the knuckle of veal in enough water to cover it until tender.

  2. Save the cooking liquid and add the knuckle bones, any other bones, ham or bacon, rice, mace, peppercorns, celery, carrot, and onion.

  3. Stew gently for 3 hours.

  4. About 30 minutes before it is done, add the bunch of sweet herbs.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup and set aside until the next day.

  2. Before reheating, carefully remove the fat.

  3. When boiling, flavor with white wine and ketchup, color with browning sauce, and add the gristle from the knuckle and veal stuffing balls.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle and bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the liquid, giving the soup body.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch softens during the long simmer.
Ham or lean bacon
Adds a smoky, savory depth to the stock.
White wine
Adds acidity and brightness to balance the rich broth.
Browning sauce
Deepens the color of the soup.

The step that matters

Carefully remove the fat before reheating. Fat that has solidified on the chilled soup can be lifted off cleanly; leaving it in or breaking it up during reheating makes the soup greasy and cloudy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, rice, celery, carrot, onion, clove):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, rice, celery, carrot, onion, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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