Name: Other White Soup
Ingredients: 1 or 2 lamb shanks; boiling water; 1 tablespoon corn flour or arrowroot; milk; seasoning to taste; toast

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Other White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

Hold the tough of the lamb shank in red-hot cinders for a few minutes to remove them.
Place the shank in boiling water to easily peel off the skin.
Break the bone into small pieces.

Make and serve the soup

Prepare the stock as you would for rabbit soup.
Add corn flour or arrowroot to thicken the stock.
Serve the soup with milk and seasoning, alongside toast.

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.

Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Lamb + corntop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together60 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lamb + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb shanks: Provide the meat and bones that flavour the stock as it simmers.
Corn flour or arrowroot: Thickens the stock so the soup has a smoother, fuller body.

“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.