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White Soup

A clear white soup made with ham, carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, mace, parsley, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the stock and add the carrot, turnip, ham, onion, thyme, mace, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Allow to simmer for one hour, then skim off the fat and strain the liquid.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the flour and mix well without browning.

  2. Add the strained stock to the flour mixture and bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises.

  3. Stir in the milk, then pour the soup into a tureen 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the soup and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup when cooked with butter.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour.
White stock
Forms the base liquid that carries the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter without browning. Flour must be cooked gently in the butter so it thickens smoothly; browning changes its colour and flavour, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste. Stirring as the stock is added prevents lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, turnip, ham, onion, thyme):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, ham, onion, thyme. 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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