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White Soup

A clear soup made with beef, veal or fowl, onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and spices, finished with cream and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and stir in the flour.

  2. Slowly add the white stock and cream, seasoning to taste.

Make the broth

  1. In another pot, brown the beef and veal (or fowl) with the onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and spices.

  2. Add water and simmer for eight hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Let it cool to remove the fat.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with a thin slice of lemon in each bowl.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavor while the flour is cooked into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the base by swelling with liquid as it is mixed in with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the finished soup.
Beef
Browning and simmering release savory flavor and gelatin into the broth.
Knuckle of veal
Adds body and gelatin to the broth as it simmers for hours.

The step that matters

Let it cool to remove the fat. Fat floats and sets on top as the broth cools, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping the cooling leaves greasy, cloudy soup.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, beef, veal, onion, turnip. 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 →

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