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White Soup

A creamy soup made with boiled fowl, veal, ham, almonds, and aromatics, thickened with arrowroot and enriched with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled fowl and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Pound the meat in a mortar until fine.

  3. Pound the blanched almonds and mix with the pounded fowl.

  4. Add cream or buffalo milk and egg yolks to the mixture.

  5. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Mix arrowroot with a little stock.

  7. Combine the arrowroot mixture with the rest of the soup mixture.

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine the white stock, veal, ham, onions, celery, carrot, parsley, and mace; boil for one hour.

  2. Strain the stock.

  3. Add the pounded fowl, almonds, and hard-boiled egg yolks to the strained stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix beaten egg yolks with boiled cream and arrowroot.

  2. Add the egg yolk mixture to the soup.

  3. Heat gently, stirring, but do not let it boil.

  4. Season with salt and sugar.

  5. Optionally add butter before serving.

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. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Almond + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Pounded into the mixture to give the soup body, a nutty flavour and a smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when heated, giving a silky, rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the soup to a smooth consistency without clouding it much.
Fowl
Pounded meat that adds savoury body and flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Heat gently, stirring, but do not let it boil. Egg yolks curdle and turn grainy when they get too hot, so the soup must be warmed slowly and stirred until it just thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, cream, egg, milk, arrowroot, veal, ham):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, cream, egg, milk, arrowroot, veal, ham. 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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