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Thickening for White Soup

A thickening mixture for white soup made with almonds, veal or chicken, stale bread, mace, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,130 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Thickening for White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Blanch the almonds in boiling water, remove the skins, and beat them to a paste with cold water in a mortar.

  2. Chop the veal or chicken finely and crumble the stale bread.

  3. Combine the almonds, meat, and bread in the mortar with the essence of mace or lemon peel.

Make the thickener

  1. Add the thick cream and simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Stir in the soup and strain through a coarse sieve.

  3. Add the strained mixture to the soup half an hour 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 + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  2. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Almond + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  4. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Their ground paste gives the soup body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Thick cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a silky mouthfeel.
Stale white bread
Its starch helps thicken the mixture and give it body.
Dressed veal or chicken
Adds savoury meat flavour and some body to the thickener.

The step that matters

Simmer the cream while stirring constantly. Cream can scorch or separate if it boils hard or sits still on the base of the pan, leaving a grainy texture and burnt taste. Gentle, constant stirring keeps it smooth and evenly heated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, veal, bread, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, veal, bread, cream. 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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