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White Soup

A veal broth thickened with cream, almonds, vermicelli, and egg yolks, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,769 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine veal, water, salt, onions, white peppercorns, and mace in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 5 hours or more.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the cream for a few minutes before adding it to the soup.

  2. In the last minute, add cream, almonds, and vermicelli.

  3. Stir gently.

  4. If needed, thicken the soup slightly.

  5. Beat the egg yolks. Mix the yolks with half a pint of the boiling soup. Stir the mixture into the pot after removing from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with a French roll.

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. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meat and gelatin that give the broth its body and savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Fresh egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently and add richness when tempered into hot liquid.
Vermicelli
Adds starchy body and a delicate texture to the soup.
Almonds
Add a mild nutty flavour and a slight crunch.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg yolks. If hot soup is poured straight into the yolks or the yolks are added to boiling liquid, they scramble into curds. Mixing them first with a little hot soup, then stirring that back into the pot off the heat, lets them thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, cream, almond, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, cream, almond, egg. 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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