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A Nice White Soup

A veal broth thickened with ground rice and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Nice White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Break up the shin of veal and soak it in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil the veal in 4 quarts of water with the onion, mace, pepper, and salt for about 5 hours.

  3. Strain the broth through a sieve and let it cool overnight.

  4. Remove the fat from the cooled broth using a cloth.

Finish the soup

  1. Bring the broth back to a boil, adjusting seasoning as needed.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of ground rice with water and stir it into the boiling broth.

  3. Add 1 pint of cream and bring it to a boil again.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal shin
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavor and body as it simmers for hours.
Ground rice
Thickens the boiling broth so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the ground rice slurry. Ground rice must be mixed smoothly with water before stirring into boiling broth; otherwise it clumps instead of thickening evenly, because starch granules need to disperse before they gelatinise.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, pepper, rice, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, pepper, rice, 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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