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Veal Soup

A hearty veal soup with vegetables and optional dumplings or noodles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the knuckle of veal and 4 quarts of water in a pot, adding 4 teaspoons of coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the veal for 1 hour, then add the sliced onions, turnips, carrots, sweet herbs, and celery.

  3. Once the vegetables are tender, strain the soup and return it to the pot.

Thicken and garnish

  1. Thicken the soup by mixing flour smoothly with a little water, then add finely chopped parsley.

Add dumplings and serve

  1. For dumplings, mix 2 teaspoons of butter with 4 teaspoons of flour and enough milk or water to make a very soft dough, then drop them into the boiling soup.

  2. If using noodles, add them to the soup and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve the meat with the vegetables around it, and optionally serve drawn butter or any meat sauce.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Gives the broth its meaty body and rich flavour as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a smooth paste, and forms the dumpling dough with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dumpling dough.
Turnips
Contribute sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup by mixing flour smoothly with a little water. Flour added dry clumps in hot liquid and stays lumpy. Mixing it into a smooth slurry first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, turnip, carrot, celery, flour, parsley, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, turnip, carrot, celery, flour, parsley, butter. 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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