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Westerfield White Soup

A veal broth with cream, vermicelli, almonds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Westerfield White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Break the bone of the veal in one or two places and place it in a pot with the cold water.

  2. Once the scum has cleared, add the salt, onion, white pepper, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Simmer slowly until the soup reduces by one-third.

  4. Strain and let it cool.

  5. Remove the fat and sediment.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the soup in a clean pot.

  2. Blend the cream with the arrowroot.

  3. Add the blended mixture to the boiling soup along with the cooked vermicelli and almond strips.

  4. Simmer for one minute.

  5. Serve immediately with a French roll.

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. Arrowroot + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Gives the soup its body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup so it turns smooth and lightly body-rich when boiled.
Vermicelli
Adds soft, starchy pasta texture to the finished soup.
Blanched almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and a delicate crunch to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot-cream mixture to the boiling soup. Arrowroot thickens when heated but can clump if added without first being blended smoothly with the cream. Adding it to a boiling soup and then simmering only briefly lets it thicken evenly without breaking down or turning gluey.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, pepper, cream, arrowroot, almond):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, pepper, cream, arrowroot, almond. 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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