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Veal Soup

A veal soup made with knuckle of veal, water, white pepper, salt, mace, lemon juice, onions, celery, turnip, flour, butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Break and cut the veal into small pieces.

  2. Put the veal into a stew-pan with the water.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim the surface, and let it simmer until reduced to 2 quarts.

  4. Strain the broth and season with white pepper, salt, mace, and lemon juice.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the broth to the pot and add the minced onions, chopped celery, and turnip.

  2. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

  3. Thicken the soup with flour kneaded with butter.

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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Gives the broth its body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the soup when kneaded with butter, giving it a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend in smoothly without lumps.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and substance to the soup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour kneaded with butter. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Kneading it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly, and the soup needs to simmer briefly afterward so the starch can fully thicken it.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mace, lemon, onion, celery, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mace, lemon, onion, celery, turnip, flour. 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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