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White Soup

A simple white soup made from fowl stock thickened with flour, butter, and cream or milk, seasoned with mace, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Strain the stock through muslin.

  2. Put the stock in a white-lined pan and bring it to a boil, adding the mace.

  3. Mix the flour with the cream or milk, then add it to the pan along with the butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cook until the flour has boiled well and the soup thickens, then serve.

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

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

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and sets in the hot stock.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the thickened soup.
Mace
Adds a warm, delicate aroma to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour after it goes in. Flour must be mixed smoothly with the cream or milk before adding, then boiled well. Starch granules swell and thicken the soup only when hot, and boiling cooks out the raw floury taste. Stopping early leaves lumps and a pasty flavour.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, mace):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, mace. 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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