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White Soup

A clear soup made with veal, fowl, bacon, rice, anchovies, herbs, and finished with almonds, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal, fowl, bacon, and water.

  2. Add rice, anchovies, peppercorns, sweet herbs, onions, and celery.

  3. Stew until the soup is strong enough for your taste.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a clean pot.

  5. Let it sit overnight, then remove the scum.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the liquid into a stew pan and add ground almonds.

  2. Boil for about 15 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve again.

  3. Stir in cream and egg yolk, boil for a few minutes, then serve.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Gives the broth body and rich, savoury flavour as it simmers.
Fowl
Adds meaty flavour and gelatin to the broth as it cooks down.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Sweet almonds
Ground into the broth to add body, nutty flavour and a creamy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup when stirred in and gently heated.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk and cream. If the soup boils hard after the egg yolk goes in, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the soup grainy instead of smooth and silky. Keep the heat gentle once the cream and yolk are added.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, rice, onion, celery, cream, egg):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, rice, onion, celery, cream, egg. 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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