Skip to main content
Main

Normandy Soup

A veal and onion soup thickened with butter, flour, and cream, served with sliced bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Normandy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the veal, onions, and water in a kettle.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Add the sliced bread.

  4. Simmer gently for 2 hours longer.

  5. Remove the bone.

Strain and thicken

  1. Press the remaining ingredients through a sieve.

  2. Return the soup to the kettle.

  3. Rub the butter and flour together until smooth.

  4. Stir this into the boiling soup and continue stirring until it thickens.

Finish

  1. Add the cream, heated almost to a boil, and season with salt and pepper 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Gives the broth savory depth and body as it simmers.
Onions
Add gentle sweetness and, once pressed through the sieve, body to the soup.
Baker's loaf
Its starch helps thicken the soup as the bread breaks down.
Flour
Its starch thickens the soup when cooked with butter and hot liquid.
Butter
Fat that combines with the flour to form a smooth thickening paste.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if dropped in unmixed. Constant stirring spreads the starch evenly, and as it heats the starch swells and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, butter, pepper, flour. 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

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes