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White Stock Soup

A veal and vegetable soup made with white stock, seasoned with mace and herbs, finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

White Stock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Slice the vegetables.

Make the stock

  1. Combine the meat, vegetables, mace, and all herbs except parsley in 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Boil slowly for about 1 hour.

  3. Add 1 gallon of cold water.

  4. Cook slowly for 4 hours.

  5. Strain the liquid.

Finish and chill

  1. Season the meat and vegetables well.

  2. Add 3 quarts of well-salted stock.

  3. Keep on ice.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Its collagen breaks down during long simmering, giving the stock body and a rich mouthfeel.
Lean bacon
Adds savory, smoky depth that rounds out the flavor of the meat stock.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook slowly in the stock.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and color to the stock.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, do not boil hard. A gentle simmer keeps the stock clear. A hard rolling boil agitates fat and small particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy, and can toughen the meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, onion, carrot, turnip, clove. 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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