Skip to main content
Main

Soup Italienne

A hearty soup made with veal knuckle, ham, carrots, turnips, peppercorns, mace, onion, celery, rice, and vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Soup Italienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the meat from the knuckle of veal and break up the bones to make a broth.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, layer the sliced ham at the bottom.

  2. Add the veal, carrots, turnips, peppercorns, mace, onion, and celery.

  3. Cover tightly and stew until the gravy is drawn out and the vegetables are tender.

  4. Pour the broth made from the knuckle bones over the ingredients until covered.

  5. Add the rice and stew for four hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve and add vermicelli 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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 knuckle
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth as it stews.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky depth to the stewed base.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during long stewing.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stewed vegetable base.
Onion
Builds savoury aromatic flavour as it softens in the stew.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and stew until the vegetables are tender. A tight lid traps steam so the liquid cannot reduce too fast, letting collagen from the bones slowly dissolve into a rich gravy while the vegetables soften fully.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, rice. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes