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White Soup

A clear soup made from veal knuckle, rice, onion, eggs, milk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine water, veal, bones, rice, and onion in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture, discarding the bones and picking out the meat.

  4. Rub the rice through a fine colander.

Finish the soup

  1. Season the soup.

  2. Return it to the heat and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Add parsley and butter.

  5. In a saucepan, heat the milk.

  6. Pour it over the beaten eggs and stir into the soup, removing from heat as soon as mixed.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 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 knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Raw rice
Rubbed through a sieve, it thickens the broth and gives it a smooth, creamy texture.
Eggs
Beaten with warm milk and stirred in, they thicken the soup and add richness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, mellowing the broth when combined with the eggs.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg and milk into the soup. Eggs thicken when heated, so if the soup is too hot or boils after adding them, they can curdle and turn grainy. Removing it from heat as soon as mixed keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, meat, rice, butter, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, meat, rice, butter, flour, egg, milk. 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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