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White Stock Soup

A clear soup made from veal knuckle, bacon, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Stock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine the knuckle of veal and lean bacon.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for several hours until the meat is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the stock to thicken it.

  3. Season to taste and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Knuckle of veal
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue and collagen, giving the stock body and richness.
Lean bacon
Adds smoky, savory flavor to the stock as it simmers with the meat.
Butter
Combined with flour to form a roux-like paste that carries fat and helps thicken the stock.
Flour
Starch that swells in the hot stock, thickening it and giving it a fuller texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour paste into the stock. Flour clumps if added dry or too quickly. Mixing it with fat first and whisking it into hot stock spreads the starch evenly so the soup thickens smoothly.

“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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