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Veal Soup

A broth of veal simmered with herbs, onion, and spices, thickened with a butter‑flour paste and finished with wine and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine veal and water; bring to a boil and cook until tender.

  2. Add marjoram, thyme, onion, pepper, and salt to the pot.

  3. In a small bowl, mix butter and flour with a little broth to form a paste.

  4. Stir the paste into the soup and let it simmer.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add wine, cloves, spice, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and serve on top of the soup.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meat and body of the soup as it cooks until tender.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the broth as it simmers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Served sliced on top, adding richness and texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour paste into the soup. Flour lumps if added dry or unblended; mixing it with broth first into a smooth paste lets it disperse evenly and thicken the soup without clumping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, marjoram, thyme, pepper, butter, flour, wine. 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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