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Veal Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, pork, onion, red pepper, carrots, turnips, potato, and optional rice or bread, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Place the veal in a pot with enough water to cover it.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil.

  3. Cook for 2 to 2½ hours, depending on the size.

  4. Add the piece of pork, onion, and red pepper to the pot.

  5. If using rice, add it with the meat at the beginning.

Add the vegetables

  1. About 45 minutes before serving, add the diced carrots and turnips.

  2. After 15 to 20 minutes, add the sliced potato and salt to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. If not using dumplings, toast slices of bread and add them to the soup.

  2. Thicken the soup with flour as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Gives the broth its main meaty flavour as it simmers for a long time.
Pork
Adds extra richness and body to the broth as it cooks.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth so it becomes more body and cling.

The step that matters

Cook the veal slowly until tender. Veal is a tough cut that needs a long, gentle simmer to break down collagen. Cooking too hard or too briefly leaves the meat chewy and the broth thin in flavour.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, onion, pepper, carrot, potato, 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.

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