Skip to main content
Main

An Excellent White Soup

A clear soup made from mutton, veal, bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, white pepper, almonds, stale bread, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

An Excellent White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the mutton, veal, shank bones, gammon, herbs, lemon peel, onions, mace, white pepper, and water in a large pot.

  2. Boil until the meat falls apart.

  3. Let the soup cool overnight.

  4. Remove the fat and sediment.

  5. Transfer the jelly to a clean saucepan.

Prepare the thickening

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Grind the almonds with a spoonful of water to make a paste.

  3. Mince the veal or chicken.

  4. Mix the minced meat with the stale bread.

  5. Combine the almond paste, minced meat, cream, lemon peel, and mace in a pot.

  6. Boil for a few minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Add this mixture to the soup.

  2. Strain through a coarse sieve.

  3. Boil the soup for an additional 30 minutes.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Ground into a paste that thickens and gives the soup body and a nutty flavour.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Stale white bread
Absorbs liquid and helps bind the minced meat into a smooth, thickening mixture.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin during long simmering, giving the stock its jelly-like body.
Mutton scrag
Simmers into the stock, adding meaty depth and flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the stock until the meat falls apart. Long, gentle simmering breaks down collagen in the knuckle and shanks into gelatin, which gives the stock body once cooled. Too little time leaves it thin and weak in flavour.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, veal, lemon, onion, mace, almond, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, veal, lemon, onion, mace, almond, 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipes