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Velvet Soup

A creamy veal soup made with veal, ham, vegetables, herbs, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Velvet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, stew the veal and ham in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Add the onions, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, lemon rind, mace, and salt.

  3. Simmer for 3 hours.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, stir in the milk and cream.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Veal
Gives the soup its body and rich, gelatinous flavor as it stews slowly.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the stock during the long simmer.
Milk
Softens the flavor and lends a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.
Cream
Adds fat for a silky, velvety texture and a rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and cream. Dairy should be stirred in only when serving, after the soup has cooled and been strained. Boiling it can cause curdling and a grainy texture, and the cream's fat is what gives the soup its velvety finish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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