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Thickening for White Soup

A thickening mixture for white soup made with almonds, veal or chicken, stale bread, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Thickening for White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch the almonds in boiling water.

  2. Remove the skins from the almonds.

  3. Beat the blanched almonds to a paste with cold water in a mortar.

  4. Chop the veal or chicken finely.

  5. Crumble the stale bread.

  6. Combine the almond paste, chopped meat, and crumbled bread in the mortar.

Make the thickener

  1. Add essence of mace and lemon peel, or finely powdered mace and grated lemon peel.

  2. Stir in the thick cream.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the soup gradually.

  5. Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir the strained mixture into the soup half an hour before serving.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  5. Almond + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Blanched and ground to a paste, they give the thickener its body and mild nutty flavour.
Veal or chicken
Chopped finely and pounded in, it adds savoury body and helps the thickener hold together.
Stale white bread
Crumbled bread soaks up liquid and adds body to the paste.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the thickened soup.

The step that matters

Simmering while stirring constantly. Cream and egg-free protein mixtures can scorch or separate on direct heat, and constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly heated during the short simmer.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, veal, bread, lemon, cream. 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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