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Veal Soup

A clear soup made with veal knuckle, water, salt, onions, turnips, carrots, herbs, celery, thickened with flour, served with 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, then add 4 teaspoons of coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the veal for 1 hour.

  3. Add the sliced onions, turnips, carrots, sweet herbs, and celery to the pot.

  4. Once the vegetables are tender, strain the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the soup to the pot and thicken it with flour mixed smoothly with a little water.

  2. Stir in finely chopped parsley.

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

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

Serve

  1. Serve the meat with the vegetables around it. Optionally, serve with 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
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the broth body and a rich meaty taste.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth as its starch swells with heat, giving the soup a fuller body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the dumpling dough, making it tender.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture to the soup as they cook.

The step that matters

Drop the dumplings into the boiling soup. The dough needs a gentle but active boil to cook through and set; if the soup is not boiling, dumplings turn dense and gummy. Keep the lid on so steam cooks them evenly.

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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