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White Soup

A veal and ham soup thickened with almonds, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the bones of the veal and ham.

  2. Stew the meat with water until it is tender and the soup is strong.

  3. Skim the soup.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  5. If letting it sit overnight, pour the soup into an earthen vessel.

  6. Remove the fat in the morning.

Finish the soup

  1. Add blanched and finely pounded almonds to the soup.

  2. Boil briefly.

  3. Mix in cream and egg yolk carefully to avoid curdling.

  4. Alternatively, thicken with a paste of almonds, veal or chicken, stale bread, cream, lemon peel, and mace.

  5. Strain the paste.

  6. Add the strained paste to the soup.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Ground into a paste that thickens the soup and gives it a creamy body and nutty flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Egg yolk
Helps enrich and thicken the cream-based soup when mixed in gently.
Veal
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock, giving body to the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing in cream and egg yolk. Egg yolk and cream can curdle if the soup is too hot or boiling when they are added. Adding them carefully, off the boil, keeps the soup smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, nutmeg, onion, celery, sugar, almond):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, nutmeg, onion, celery, sugar, almond. 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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