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The White Soup of Gover

A veal stock-based white soup with onion, celery, leeks, pumpkin, carrots, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The White Soup of Gover

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Warm the veal stock in a double saucepan.

  2. In a single saucepan, combine the chopped onion, celery, leeks, pumpkin, and carrots with enough top fat to form a pulp without burning.

  3. Cook the mixture over medium heat for 10 minutes.

Thicken and simmer

  1. Add flour gradually until it forms a pulpy paste, stirring briskly for 5 minutes.

  2. Combine the mixture with the hot veal stock and let it stew slowly in boiling water for 1.5 hours, stirring frequently.

Strain and finish

  1. Pass the soup through a wire sieve into a clean double saucepan.

  2. Adjust seasoning with salt and herbs, then stir in the cream until well combined and heated through.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth body as it cooks with the fat and vegetables.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture at the end.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Pumpkin
Breaks down during stewing to add body, sweetness and color.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the fat and vegetables. Flour must be worked into the hot fat and vegetable pulp and stirred well so it cooks out without lumps or raw flour taste before the stock goes in.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, celery, leek, carrot, flour, cream):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, celery, leek, carrot, flour, 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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