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Soup

White Stock Soup

A light soup made from stock, onion, turnip, milk, potato flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

White Stock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the onion and turnip in a small quantity of stock until tender.

  2. Chop the onion and turnip finely and add them to the remaining stock.

Thicken and finish

  1. Boil the milk and thicken it with the potato flour mixed with a little water.

  2. Stir the thickened milk into the stock.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the fresh butter.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 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

Potato flour
Thickens the milk and stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup.
Fresh milk
Adds creamy richness and softens the flavour of the stock.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and a silky finish.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the stock.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy sweetness and body as it softens in the stock.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk. Potato flour must be mixed smoothly with a little cold water before it goes into the hot milk, or it clumps. Starch thickens only once it is heated and dispersed evenly, so stirring keeps the soup smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, turnip, milk, potato, flour, pepper, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, turnip, milk, potato, flour, pepper, nutmeg. 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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