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White Portable Soup

A veal and chicken feet soup that sets into a clear jelly, served with vermicelli and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,243 recipes. Both carry 3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

White Portable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Chop the veal and chicken feet into pieces and wash the feet well.

  2. In a large iron kettle, combine the veal, chicken feet, and water.

  3. Stew until the meat is tender, about 8 hours.

  4. Fill a tea cup with the soup and let it cool.

  5. If it hardens enough to cut, strain through a sieve to remove fat.

Set and dry the cakes

  1. Pour the clear jelly into cups and place them in a boiling water bath until set.

  2. Once nearly cold, turn the cups onto a piece of new flannel to draw out moisture.

  3. Turn them after 7 hours and continue until hard.

  4. Store the cakes in tin canisters in a dry place.

Serve

  1. Cut a piece the size of a walnut.

  2. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over it. Stir until dissolved.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Boil some vermicelli in water.

  5. Add 1 cake of soup to 1 pint of water. Simmer and serve in a tureen with toasted bread and 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. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Breaks down during long stewing to give the broth body and savory flavor.
Chicken feet
Their collagen dissolves into gelatin, so the cooled broth sets into a firm jelly.
Water
Extracts flavor and collagen from the meat and bones over the long stew.

The step that matters

Judging when the stock is ready to set. Collagen from the feet must be fully extracted and the broth concentrated enough, or the cooled soup will stay liquid instead of forming a firm jelly that can be cut and dried.

“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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