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White Soup

A clear soup made with butter, flour, milk, stock, and seasonings, optionally enriched with eggs, cream, or thickening ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a soup pot, mix the butter and flour thoroughly.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly until melted; do not let it brown.

  3. Stir in the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the stock and season with white pepper and salt.

  5. Let it boil for about 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add a little lemon juice and chopped parsley.

  2. A grating of nutmeg can enhance the flavor.

  3. For a richer soup, omit the milk and add the beaten yolks of three eggs and a cup of hot cream just before serving.

  4. Alternatively, for thickening, simmer a paste made of ground almonds, stale bread, cold veal or jowl, and grated lemon rind in the stock for 1 hour.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the soup and carries the flour, giving body and a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with the butter and liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness, and helps build the soup's body.
White stock
Forms the main liquid, supplying most of the soup's savory flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour without browning. The roux must melt and cook gently over medium heat without browning. Browning changes the flavor and color of the white soup, and stirring constantly prevents scorching and lumps.

“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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