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Victoria Soup

A hearty soup made with fowl, veal, vegetables, ham, butter, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Victoria Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wipe, clean, and disjoint the fowl.

  2. Wipe the veal, remove from the bone, and cut into small pieces.

Make the stock

  1. Put the meat, bone, and water in a kettle, heat slowly to boiling, skim, and cook slowly for four hours.

  2. Cook the vegetables and ham in one tablespoon of butter for five minutes, then add to the soup with peppercorns and salt, and cook for one hour.

  3. Strain the soup, cool, and remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat three cups of stock, thickening with the remaining butter and flour cooked together.

  2. Just before serving, add the cream and egg yolks.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

Fowl
Provides the main meat flavour and body for the stock.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin from the bone, giving the stock more body and richness.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux that thickens the stock.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup slightly when added off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is kept at a hard boil. Adding them just before serving, with the soup hot but not boiling, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, butter, flour, parsley, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, butter, flour, parsley, cream. 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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