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White Soup with Almonds

A creamy veal-based soup thickened with almond paste, butter, and flour, flavored with white pepper, mace, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Soup with Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the pounded almonds with a little water to form a paste.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.

Make the soup

  1. Add the cream to a double boiler with the lemon rind and heat gently.

  2. Gradually pour the heated veal jelly into the cream, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the almond paste, white pepper, salt, and mace to the mixture.

  4. Simmer for 15 minutes, then remove the lemon rind before serving.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal jelly
Forms the savoury liquid base that gives the soup its body and meaty flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and thicken the soup as a fine paste.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and, with flour, forms the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the melted butter into a roux.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the heated veal jelly into the cream, stirring continuously.. Adding hot liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour-thickened base smooth, preventing lumps from forming as the mixture thickens.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cream, almond, butter, flour, mace, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, almond, butter, flour, mace, lemon. 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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