Skip to main content
Main

A Cheap Family White Soup

A light veal and ham soup flavored with herbs, lemon peel, mace, and thickened with arrowroot, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Cheap Family White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the veal, ham, herbs, onion, lemon peel, mace, and water in a stewpan.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the veal.

  4. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Blend the arrowroot with cream.

  2. Stir the mixture into the new milk.

  3. Add the mixture to the soup.

  4. Season the soup with salt.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  6. Serve with sippets of toast.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 a rich, savoury body as it simmers into the stock.
Lean ham or bacon
Adds savoury, smoky flavour to the stock.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, silky texture without making it cloudy.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and a softer, creamier finish.
New milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Blending the arrowroot with cream before adding it. Arrowroot clumps if added dry or straight into hot liquid. Mixing it smoothly with cold cream first lets it disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, lemon, arrowroot, cream, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, lemon, arrowroot, cream, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes