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White Soup

A light soup made with ground almonds, milk, water, vermicelli, mace, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the ground almonds and mace in the water and milk for 1 hour, then remove the mace.

  2. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste, then add the vermicelli.

  3. Cook gently until the vermicelli is soft, then 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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  3. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  4. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Ground almonds
Add body and a nutty flavour, as their fats and solids thicken the simmering liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture from its fat and milk proteins.
Vermicelli
Softens in the soup and releases starch, which lightly thickens the broth.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour as it simmers in the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the almonds and milk. Milk and ground almonds can scorch or stick to the base of the pan if the heat is too high. A gentle simmer for the full hour extracts flavour evenly and keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, mace, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mace, pepper. 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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