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White Soup Without Meat

A clear soup made with water, bread crumb, herbs, pepper, cloves, onion, celery, endive, lettuce, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Soup Without Meat

Why it works: Endive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

White Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put 2 quarts of water in a clean saucepan.

  2. Add the bread crumb, sweet herbs, pepper, cloves, chopped onion, and salt.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the cut white parts of celery, endive, and lettuce.

  5. Boil until smooth.

  6. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained soup to the fire.

  2. When it begins to boil, add the butter rolled in flour.

  3. Boil for a few more minutes.

  4. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Endive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + endivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's loaf crumb
Thickens the broth and gives the soup body as it breaks down during boiling.
Butter rolled in flour
Adds richness and fat, and the flour helps thicken the soup when it is stirred in.
Celery, endive, and lettuce
Contribute vegetable flavor and, once boiled, help make the soup smooth.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour clumps if dropped in loose, so it must be rolled into the butter first and added to a simmering liquid. Stirring it in well keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, celery, endive, lettuce, butter, flour):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, celery, endive, lettuce, butter, flour. 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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