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Thickening for White Soup

A thickening mixture of almonds, meat, stale bread, and cream for white soup.

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 to loosen the skins, then remove the skins.

  2. In a mortar, beat the almonds with 1 tablespoon of cold water until a paste forms.

  3. Chop the veal or chicken finely and crumble the stale bread.

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

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

Make the thickener

  1. Stir in 1 pint of thick cream and simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Add 1 pint or more of the soup and strain 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
Provide the base paste that gives the thickener body and a nutty flavour.
Stale white bread
Absorbs liquid and helps bind the mixture to add body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smooth, velvety texture.
Veal or chicken
Contributes savoury meaty flavour and some body to the thickener.

The step that matters

Simmering the cream mixture. Cream can curdle or scorch if it boils hard or sits unattended. Simmering gently while stirring constantly keeps it smooth and evenly heated before it is strained into the soup.

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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