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White Soup

A veal broth thickened with vermicelli, butter, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the veal in a soup kettle and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

  3. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the broth and add salt, pepper, mace, and vermicelli.

  5. Boil slowly for about 15 minutes until the vermicelli is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

  2. In a tureen, beat the egg yolks with the cream.

  3. Slowly pour the hot soup over the egg mixture, stirring quickly.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavour into the broth as it simmers, giving body to the soup.
Vermicelli
Thin pasta that softens in the hot broth and gives the soup its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and enrich the soup when stirred into the hot broth.
Cream
Adds richness and softness, and mellows the egg yolks when combined with them.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the hot soup over the egg mixture, stirring quickly.. Adding hot broth to the yolks too fast or without stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps. Tempering gradually and stirring keeps the mixture smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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