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A Simple White Soup

A clear soup made with veal knuckle, chorissa, carrots, onions, turnips, mace, and vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Simple White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Break the knuckle of veal and place it in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chorissa, carrot, onions, turnips, and blade of mace.

  3. Pour in 2-3 quarts of water or weak broth.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt, parsley, and whole white pepper.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil until sufficiently cooked, then skim and strain the soup.

  2. Thicken the soup with pounded 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Veal knuckle
Gives the broth body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers.
Pounded vermicelli
Starch that thickens the strained soup as it cooks.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Skimming and straining the soup. Skimming removes foam and fat that would cloud the broth and taste greasy. Straining removes solids so the soup stays clear and smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, onion, turnip, mace, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, onion, turnip, mace, parsley. 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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