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Westerfield White Soup

A veal soup with cream, arrowroot, and vermicelli, seasoned with salt, onions, white pepper, mace, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and mace 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 ↓

Westerfield White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Break the bone of the veal in one or two places and place it in a pot with the cold water.

  2. Once the scum is cleared, add the salt, onions, white pepper, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Simmer slowly until the soup reduces by one third, then strain and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fat and sediment, then reheat the soup in a clean pot.

  2. When boiling, mix in the cream blended with arrowroot and the cooked vermicelli.

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Corn + arrowroottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Gives the stock body and rich flavour as it simmers down.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup so it turns smooth and lightly body-rich when boiled.
Fresh vermicelli
Adds a tender pasta element that soaks up some of the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and arrowroot mixture at a boil. Arrowroot thickens when heated but can clump if added to liquid unevenly. Blending it first into the cream and stirring it in while the soup is boiling helps it disperse and thicken smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, corn, mace, pepper, cream, arrowroot):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, corn, mace, pepper, cream, arrowroot. 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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