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White Soup

A veal soup simmered for hours, finished with almonds, vermicelli, cream, and egg yolks.

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 and simmer for 5 hours or more.

Finish the soup

  1. In the last minute of cooking, add the blanched almonds and vermicelli.

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

  3. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with half a pint of the boiling soup, then stir this mixture into the pot after removing it from the heat.

  4. Serve immediately with a French roll and grated Parmesan cheese on the side.

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
Gives the broth its meaty body and rich flavor as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently tempered into the hot broth.
Vermicelli
Adds starch and body, giving the soup a substantial texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the soup. If the yolks are added to liquid that is too hot or left on heat, they can scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Tempering them with some hot soup first and removing the pot from the heat helps keep the mixture silky.

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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