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White Soup

A clear broth made with beef, veal, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a separate pot, brown the shin of beef, knuckle of veal (or fowl), and vegetables.

  2. Add water, ham, peppercorns, cloves, and salt; simmer for 8 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  4. Remove the fat from the top and clarify the stock.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour.

  2. Slowly add the white stock and cream, stirring continuously.

  3. Season with salt to taste.

  4. Add lemon juice and thinly shaved rind just before serving.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour while the flour is cooked into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the long-simmered stock.

The step that matters

Clarifying the stock after straining. Fat left on the surface makes the soup greasy and cloudy. Chilling and skimming the fat off the cooled stock gives a clearer, cleaner base before the soup is finished.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, beef, veal, ham, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, beef, veal, ham, onion. 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.

More white soup recipes

Stock 28Swiss 18Westerfield 14Veal 5Rich 4Plain 3 See all 83 →

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