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White Soup Without Meat

A creamy vegetable soup made with milk, onions, turnip, celery, parsley, peppers, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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White Soup Without Meat

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the onion, turnip, celery, parsley, bay leaves, and whole peppers in 1 quart of water for 8 hours until reduced to ½ pint.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

Thicken and finish

  1. Rub the flour into the butter.

  2. Thicken the soup, stirring until it boils.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Let it boil again.

  5. Pour the soup over the beaten egg.

  6. Stir well.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Adds richness and body, giving the soup its creamy, white character.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with the flour forms a roux that helps thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter and stirred into the liquid.
Egg
Enriches the soup and, when beaten and combined with the hot soup, adds body and silkiness.

The step that matters

Pour the soup over the beaten egg. Adding hot soup to beaten egg gradually, while stirring, warms the egg slowly so it blends smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, turnip, celery, parsley, pepper, egg, 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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