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A White Portable Soup

A clear soup made from veal and chicken feet, served with vermicelli and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,243 recipes. Both carry 3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

A White Portable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Bone the leg of veal and remove all skin and fat.

  2. Combine veal and chicken feet in a pot with soft water.

  3. Cover and simmer for about 8 hours until meat is tender.

  4. Test the jelly; if it sets, strain through a sieve, discarding fat.

  5. Pour the clear jelly into china cups and let it cool.

Serve

  1. To use, dissolve a walnut-sized piece in 1 pint of boiling water, seasoning to taste.

  2. For soup, boil vermicelli in water, then add melted soup and serve over hardened bread.

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. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal leg
Breaks down into rich meat and gelatin that give the stock body and flavor.
Chicken feet
Their collagen converts to gelatin, helping the broth set into a jelly.
Soft water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts gelatin and flavor from the meat and feet.

The step that matters

Testing the jelly before straining. Gelatin only sets once the stock has cooled enough, so the test shows whether enough collagen has dissolved. Straining before this check, or with the fat left in, leaves a cloudy, greasy result.

“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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