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White Soup

A clear soup made with white stock, rice, vermicelli, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare the white stock by boiling white meats such as veal, lamb, or fowl.

Make the soup

  1. Wash the rice in several changes of water, then boil it in a small amount of the white stock.

  2. Gradually add more stock until the rice is tender and the soup thickens.

  3. Mix ground rice with cream or milk to form a paste, then stir it into the boiling soup until thickened.

  4. Cook the vermicelli in boiling water for 6 to 10 minutes, then add it to the soup.

  5. Soak macaroni in cold water for an hour, then boil until tender before adding it to the soup.

Season

  1. Season with white pepper, nutmeg, white wine, and lemon to taste.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens and swells as it cooks, giving the soup body and a thick, starchy texture.
Ground rice
Forms a paste that thickens the soup when stirred into the boiling liquid.
Vermicelli
Adds soft pasta pieces that give the soup bulk and a tender bite.
White stock
Provides the main liquid and savoury meaty flavour of the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and helps thicken the soup with the ground rice.

The step that matters

Stirring the ground rice paste into the boiling soup. Ground rice thickens by starch gelatinising in hot liquid. If the paste is added without being smoothed first, or the soup is not kept hot while stirring, it can clump into lumps instead of thickening evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, onion, ham, nutmeg, white wine, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, onion, ham, nutmeg, white wine, lemon. 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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