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An Excellent White Soup

A clear soup made from mutton, veal, shank-bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, white pepper, almonds, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

An Excellent White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the mutton, veal, shank-bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, and white pepper in 3 quarts of water until the meat falls apart.

  2. Remove the fat and sediment the next day, then place the jelly in a clean saucepan.

Make the almond and meat mixture

  1. Blanch the almonds and beat them to a paste with 1 tablespoon of water.

  2. Mince the veal or chicken and mix it with stale bread.

  3. Combine the almond paste, minced meat, thick cream, lemon peel, and powdered mace in a saucepan and boil for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 pint of the soup, strain, and serve.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Their oils and starch thicken the soup and give it a rich, nutty body when beaten into a paste.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a smooth, velvety texture.
Stale white bread
Its starch helps bind the minced meat and thicken the mixture.
Mutton
Long simmering releases gelatin and flavour, forming the body of the stock.
Veal or chicken
Minced and added to the soup, it contributes savoury meat flavour and body.

The step that matters

Boil the almond, meat, and cream mixture only briefly. Cream and almond proteins can separate or curdle if boiled hard for a long time, so a gentle, short simmer keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, veal, lemon, onion, mace, almond, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, veal, lemon, onion, mace, almond, bread. 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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