Skip to main content
Main

White Soup

A veal and ham broth thickened with almonds and cream, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the bones of the veal and ham.

  2. Stew them gently with water until the meat is tender and the soup is strong.

  3. Skim the soup.

  4. Strain it through a fine sieve.

  5. Let it sit overnight if possible.

  6. Remove the fat in the morning.

Add the almonds

  1. Add the pounded almonds to the soup.

  2. Boil for a short time before straining again.

Finish with cream and egg yolk

  1. Mix the cream and egg yolk in the serving bowl.

  2. Pour the hot soup over it carefully to avoid curdling.

Alternative thickening

  1. Alternatively, to thicken, blend the almonds with a little water, minced veal or chicken, and stale white bread.

  2. Mix with cream and seasonings.

  3. Boil this mixture for a few minutes.

  4. Add a pint of soup.

  5. Strain.

  6. Combine with the rest of the soup.

  7. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

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

Sweet almonds
Pounded almonds thicken the soup and give it a rich, nutty flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the cream when combined with the hot soup.
Veal
Gives the stock its body and savoury depth as it stews.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Pour the hot soup over the cream and egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. Adding hot soup slowly while stirring tempers the yolk so it does not scramble and curdle in the bowl.

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.

More almond soup recipes

Chicken 5White 3 See all 79 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes