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White Soup

A veal-based white soup with turnips, carrot, peppers, rice/farina, cream, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal, turnips, carrot, whole peppers, and ground rice or farina in water.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add a little of the egg whites.

  2. Pour in the cream and mix well.

  3. Do not boil the egg and cream mixture; instead, add it to the tureen.

  4. Stir gently as you pour the hot soup over the egg and cream mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Turnip + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth, rich liaison when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Ground rice or farina
Thickens the broth slightly, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the hot soup to the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but curdle if they boil. Pouring the hot soup in slowly while stirring gently tempers the eggs, so the soup stays smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, pepper, rice, cream, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, pepper, rice, cream, egg. 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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