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White Soup

A clear mutton soup made with back ribs, vegetables, and a flour‑milk roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the mutton in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the chopped carrot, turnip, onion, and parsnip.

  3. Boil together for 2 hours on low heat.

  4. Remove the mutton and strain the stock through a sieve, pressing the vegetables to extract flavor.

  5. Return the stock to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the flour with the milk, salt, and pepper, then add to the soup.

  2. Stir until it boils.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Mutton back ribs
Release flavor and gelatin into the stock as they simmer.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavor into a rich, mellow body.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stock as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk mixture. Flour lumps if dumped into hot liquid unmixed. Mixing it smoothly with the milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without clumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, parsnip, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, parsnip, flour, milk, pepper. 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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