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White Soup

A creamy veal soup with ham, almonds, eggs, and cream, seasoned with mace, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer and strain

  1. Combine the white stock, veal, ham, onions, celery, carrot, parsley, and mace in a pot and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture and add the pounded fowl, almonds, and yolks of hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve or cloth.

Enrich and finish

  1. In a bowl, mix the beaten yolks of 6 eggs with the boiled cream and arrowroot, then add to the soup.

  2. Heat the soup gently, stirring until hot but do not let it boil.

  3. Season with salt and sugar. Optionally, add butter instead of arrowroot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Boiled cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Sweet almonds
Add body and a creamy texture when pounded and strained into the soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, glossy body without clouding it.
Veal
Gives the stock deep, meaty flavor and body during simmering.

The step that matters

Heating the soup gently without boiling. Once the egg yolks are added, boiling can curdle them and leave the soup grainy. Gentle heat lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, celery, carrot, parsley, almond):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, celery, carrot, parsley, almond. 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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