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Another Way to Make White Soup

A veal and ham white soup thickened with almonds, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pheasant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Another Way to Make White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine the stock, veal, ham, onions, carrot, parsley, and mace.

  2. Boil for one hour, then strain the mixture.

Add the pounded ingredients

  1. Add the pounded fowl or pheasant, pounded almonds, and pounded egg yolks to the strained stock.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and thicken

  1. Mix the beaten egg yolks with the warmed cream and add to the soup.

  2. Stir over low heat until thoroughly hot, but do not allow it to boil.

  3. Season with salt and add the pounded sugar.

  4. To prevent curdling, mix in 2 or 3 teaspoons of common batter with the cream.

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. Rabbit + pheasanttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 give it a smooth, rich body as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Sweet almonds
Contribute body and a creamy, smooth texture when pounded into the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Fowl or pheasant
Adds body and savoury meat flavour when finely pounded into the soup.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks in the cream thicken the soup as they warm, but boiling makes them curdle and turn grainy. The common batter helps stabilise the mixture against curdling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, ham, onion, carrot, parsley, pheasant. 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.

More white soup recipes

Stock 28Swiss 18Westerfield 14Veal 5Rich 4Plain 3 See all 83 →

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