Skip to main content
Soup

White Soup

A light soup made with eggs, flour, milk, rice, celery, and served with beaten eggs and crisp bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Beat the eggs, flour, and milk together.

  2. Pour the mixture slowly through a sieve into boiling soup, adding salt and pepper.

  3. In a separate pot, combine boiled rice and 2 quarts of boiling milk with chopped celery.

  4. Cover and simmer over boiling water until the celery is tender, then season to taste.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, place the well-beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the soup over the eggs and top with crisp bread dice.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the soup as they set in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Flour
Stabilises the egg mixture and helps thicken the soup smoothly.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and adds richness to the soup.
Rice
Adds body and a soft texture to the soup.
Celery
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour as it softens in the milk.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture slowly through a sieve into the boiling soup. Eggs can scramble and flour can clump if the mixture hits the hot liquid too fast. A slow pour through a sieve breaks up lumps and lets the eggs thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, pepper, rice, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, pepper, rice, bread. 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 →

You might also like

Cream of CeleryCream of Celery37 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes