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White Soup

A veal and ham broth thickened with almonds, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Break the bones of the veal and stew it with the ham, mace, nutmeg, onion, celery, salt, and sugar in 1 gallon to 6 quarts of water until the meat is tender and the soup is strong.

  2. Skim the soup.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  4. If left overnight, pour the soup into an earthen vessel and remove the fat in the morning.

Add the almonds and cream

  1. Mix the pounded almonds with the soup.

  2. Boil the mixture for a short time.

  3. Strain the mixture again.

  4. Add the cream and egg yolk carefully to avoid curdling.

  5. Mix them in the tureen.

  6. Pour the soup over the mixture.

  7. Blend the almonds with a little water.

  8. Mix in minced veal or chicken and stale bread.

  9. Combine this mixture with a pint of thick cream, lemon peel, and powdered mace.

  10. Boil for a few minutes.

  11. Strain the mixture.

  12. Add it to the main soup.

  13. If cream is unavailable, use new milk with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs and ground rice, arrowroot, or flour to thicken.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Its bones and meat build the rich, strongly flavoured broth that the soup is based on.
Ham
Stewed with the veal, it adds savoury depth to the broth.
Sweet almonds
Pounded and blended into the soup, they give body and a mild, nutty richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thick texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the cream mixture, giving the soup a smooth body.

The step that matters

Add the cream and egg yolk carefully to avoid curdling. Egg yolk and cream can curdle or turn grainy when they meet hot liquid. Adding them gradually and avoiding a hard boil helps keep the soup smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, nutmeg, onion, celery, sugar, almond):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, nutmeg, onion, celery, sugar, almond. 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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