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White Soup

A creamy soup made from veal bones, cream, flour, butter, and a roll, seasoned with mace and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the bones of the veal into small pieces.

  2. Cover the veal in a pan with mace, broken peppercorns, turnip, carrot, onion, and celery.

  3. Add 1 quart of water and simmer gently for 3 hours.

  4. Stir the soup. Add more water to maintain the quantity.

  5. Strain through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Combine the strained soup with ½ pint of cream.

  2. Thicken with flour and butter.

  3. Boil the roll in the soup until soft.

  4. Rub the roll through a sieve with some soup.

  5. Return the sifted soup to the pot. Thicken the 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. 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

Bony part of a knuckle of veal
Gives the stock its body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the liquid when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps the flour thicken smoothly.
Roll
Soaked, boiled and pushed through a sieve, it adds body and thickening to the soup.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in butter and then whisked into the hot soup, or it forms lumps. Starch only thickens fully once heated in liquid, so the soup must be kept simmering while it thickens.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, cream, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, cream, flour. 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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