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White Soup

A clear beef and veal soup with carrots, turnips, onions, white pepper, mace, almonds, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the stock

  1. Blanch the beef in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Put the beef, veal, water, carrots, turnips, onions, white pepper, mace, and salt into a pot.

  3. Boil for 4 hours or until the strength is extracted.

  4. Strain the soup and refrigerate overnight to remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Blanch the almonds, pound them with a little water to prevent oiling, and mix with the soup.

  2. Boil the soup briefly, then add the cream just before serving.

  3. Do not allow the soup to boil after adding the cream.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Very lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and body of the stock.
Knuckle of veal
Adds gelatin, which gives the finished soup a fuller body.
Sweet almonds
Thicken the soup and add a mild, nutty sweetness.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Do not allow the soup to boil after adding the cream. Boiling cream can cause it to curdle and separate, leaving the soup grainy and less smooth. Adding it just before serving and keeping the soup hot but not boiling protects its texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, turnip, onion, mace, almond):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, turnip, onion, mace, almond. 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.

More white soup recipes

Stock 28Swiss 18Westerfield 14Veal 5Rich 4Plain 3 See all 83 →

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