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Veal Soup

A clear broth of veal with vegetables and mashed potatoes, served with matzo balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring the veal and water to a boil, skimming carefully.

  2. Cut the vegetables into small pieces and add them to the pot.

  3. Boil until the veal separates from the bone.

  4. Remove the veal from the pot.

  5. Cut the veal into small squares.

  6. Return the veal squares to the pot along with the mashed potatoes and seasoning.

Make the matzo balls

  1. For the matzo balls, soak the biscuits and squeeze out the water.

  2. Fry the onion in a little fat or oil until soft.

  3. Mix the soaked biscuits, eggs, suet, marjoran, parsley, fried onion, nutmeg, and breadcrumbs together.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls and boil them for 20 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and rich body as it simmers off the bone.
Potatoes
Mashed into the broth, they thicken it and add body and a mild starchy sweetness.
Eggs
Bind the matzo ball mixture so the balls hold their shape during boiling.
Biscuits
Soaked and squeezed, they form the light base of the matzo balls.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the matzo balls moist and tender.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help the matzo ball mixture hold together.

The step that matters

Skimming the veal broth. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that rise during the first boil, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, celery, saffron, leek, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, celery, saffron, leek, clove. 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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