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A Rich White Soup

A creamy soup made from veal, mutton, almonds, cream, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

A Rich White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the veal, mutton, mace, white pepper, onions, and sweet herbs in a small quantity of water the day before serving.

  2. Remove the fat from the stock.

  3. Place the jelly in a saucepan.

Make the thickening

  1. Blend the almonds with a little water to form a paste.

  2. Add the bread or roll crumb and cold veal or chicken to the almond paste, and mix the mixture well.

  3. Boil this mixture with the cream, lemon peel, and pounded mace for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the thickening to the soup.

  2. Let the soup boil.

  3. Strain the soup into a tureen.

  4. Adjust salt 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Veal + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Sweet almonds
Blended into a paste that gives the soup body and a mild, nutty richness.
Raw cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
White bread or roll crumb
Absorbs liquid and helps thicken the almond paste into the soup.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavour into the stock, giving body and savour.
Mutton scrag
Adds meaty depth of flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened mixture with cream. Cream can curdle or split if boiled too hard or for too long. Boiling gently for only a few minutes keeps the soup smooth and well emulsified.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mutton, mace, onion, almond, bread, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mutton, mace, onion, almond, bread, cream. 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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