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White Soup

A creamy almond soup with veal or poultry, stale bread, mace, lemon peel, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond base

  1. In a marble mortar, beat the almonds to a paste with the water.

  2. Combine the paste with the cold veal or poultry and stale bread.

  3. Add the pounded mace and the chopped lemon peel, then mix well.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour the boiling stock over the mixture and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into the cream, then stir the cream into the soup.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil and serve immediately.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Ground into a paste, they give the soup its body and nutty flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Rubbed into the cream, they help thicken and enrich the soup.
Stale bread
Its starch helps bind and thicken the almond mixture.
Cold veal or poultry
Adds meaty body and savoury depth to the soup.
Boiling stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolks. Stirring the enriched cream into a boiling soup can cause it to curdle or split. Bringing the soup back to a boil after adding the cream risks the same problem, so keep heat gentle at that point.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, veal, bread, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, veal, bread, lemon, egg, cream. 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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