Skip to main content
Main

An Excellent White Soup

A rich soup made from mutton, veal, 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
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Combine mutton, veal, shank bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, and white pepper with 3 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Boil until the meat falls apart.

  3. The next day, remove the fat and clear the jelly from the sediment.

Prepare the enrichment

  1. Blanch the almonds in a separate bowl and grind them to a paste with 1 tablespoon of water.

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

Finish the soup

  1. Combine this mixture with 1 pint of thick cream, a piece of lemon peel, and powdered mace.

  2. Boil for a few minutes.

  3. Add 1 pint of the soup.

  4. Strain.

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

Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the finished soup.
Stale white bread
Soaks up liquid and helps thicken the minced meat mixture into a smooth base.
Sweet almonds
Ground to a paste, they add body and a mild, nutty sweetness to the soup.
Mutton
Long simmering releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the stock.
Veal knuckle
Its collagen breaks down during simmering, giving the stock body and a jelly-like richness.

The step that matters

Clear the jelly from the sediment the next day. Chilling the stock lets fat solidify on top and gelatin set, so removing the fat and lifting off the sediment keeps the soup clear and free of greasy residue.

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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipes