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White Soups

A clear veal and ham soup thickened with almonds, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the bones of the veal and stew it with the ham, mace, nutmeg, onions, celery, salt, and sugar in 1 gallon to 6 quarts of water until the meat is tender and the soup is strong.

  2. Skim the soup.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  4. If left overnight, pour the soup into an earthen vessel and remove the fat in the morning.

Thicken and enrich

  1. Add the pounded almonds to the soup and boil for a short time.

  2. Strain the soup again.

  3. Blend the almonds with a little water.

  4. Mince a slice of cooked veal or chicken and mix it with stale white bread.

  5. Combine this mixture with a pint of thick cream, lemon peel, and powdered mace.

  6. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  7. Add a pint of the soup to the mixture.

  8. Strain through a coarse sieve.

  9. Add this thickening to the main soup.

  10. Boil the soup for an additional hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the cream and egg yolk in a tureen.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the cream and egg yolk mixture carefully to avoid curdling.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  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 scrag or knuckle
Gives the soup its rich meaty body and flavour as the bones simmer.
Lean ham
Adds savoury depth and salty flavour to the stock.
Sweet almonds
Thicken the soup and add a mild, nutty creaminess.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body, and the egg yolk helps it set smoothly into the soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the cream when hot soup is added gently.

The step that matters

Pour the hot soup over the cream and egg yolk. Adding the hot soup slowly and while stirring warms the egg yolk gradually. Pouring too fast or letting it get too hot can scramble the yolk and curdle the liaison.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, nutmeg, onion, celery, sugar, 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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