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White Soup

A veal soup with cream, almonds, vermicelli, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 485 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine veal, water, salt, onions, white pepper, and mace in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 5 hours or more.

  3. Boil the cream for a few minutes before adding it to the soup.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Blanch and cut almonds into strips.

  2. Simmer almonds for 1 minute.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix egg yolks with ½ pint of boiling soup.

  2. Stir the mixture into the pot after removing from heat.

  3. Serve immediately with a French roll.

  4. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese on the side.

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. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

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

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  5. Cream + almondtop 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

Veal
Provides the meat and gelatin that give the simmered soup its body and richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Fresh egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently when tempered in hot liquid and stirred in off the heat.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and a crisp, slivered texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture into the soup off the heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Tempering them with hot soup first and adding them after removing the pot from heat lets them thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, corn, mace, cream, almond, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, corn, mace, cream, almond, egg. 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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