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To Make White Soup

A clear beef broth with vegetables, eggs, parsley, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Make White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the brisket in water with salt, pepper, mace, saffron, turnip, carrot, celery, onion, and garlic.

  2. Boil fast, then skim well and let it simmer until the meat is tender.

Finish the soup

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with parsley, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling soup.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the soup lightly when stirred into the hot broth, giving it body.
Brisket
Slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the soup and balances the richness of the broth and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling soup. Eggs can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too abruptly. Whisking a little hot broth into the beaten eggs first, then stirring them back into the soup, helps them blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, saffron, turnip, carrot, celery, onion, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, saffron, turnip, carrot, celery, onion, clove. 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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