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White Soup

A clear soup made with veal or fowl, ham or bacon, onions, thyme, pepper, salt, ground rice, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the knuckle of veal or fowl, ham or bacon, and water in a pot.

  2. Boil until reduced to 2 quarts.

  3. Add onions, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil the day before serving to remove fat and sediment.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the soup and stir in ground rice and cream continuously over low heat.

  2. Allow it to just boil, then strain into a tureen.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Thyme + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together912 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smoother, more body-filled texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Veal knuckle or fowl
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the water as it simmers, forming the base stock.
Ham or lean bacon
Adds smoky, salty savoury flavour to the stock.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook into the stock.

The step that matters

Stir in the ground rice and cream over low heat. Starch thickens only when heated, and cream can curdle or scorch if it boils hard or sits over high heat. Stirring continuously and keeping the heat low distributes the starch evenly and keeps the cream smooth.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, pepper, rice, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, pepper, rice, cream. 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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