Skip to main content
Main

An Excellent White Soup

A white soup made from mutton, veal, shank bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, almonds, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

An Excellent White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the mutton, veal, shank bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, and white pepper in 3 quarts of water until the meat falls apart.

  2. The next day, remove the fat and clear the jelly from the sediment.

Prepare the almonds and meat

  1. In a mortar, blanch and beat the almonds with 1 tablespoon of water to prevent oiling.

  2. Mince the veal or chicken and mix it with a piece of stale bread.

Finish the soup

  1. Combine the almond paste with 1 pint of thick cream, a piece of lemon peel, and powdered mace; boil for a few minutes.

  2. Add 1 pint of the soup to the mixture, strain, and 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Beaten into a paste, they thicken the soup and give it a rich, nutty body.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished soup a smooth, velvety texture.
Mutton
Long simmering breaks down its connective tissue, releasing gelatin that gives body to the stock.
Stale white bread
Its starch helps thicken the soup and gives it a smoother, fuller texture.

The step that matters

Beating the almonds with water. Adding water while pounding the almonds keeps their oil from separating, so the paste stays smooth and blends into the cream rather than turning greasy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipes