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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A creamy chicken soup with egg yolks, bread crumbs, and hot cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the fat from the water in which the chicken has been boiled.

  2. Season the water with salt, pepper, celery salt, and onion.

  3. Bring the seasoned water to a boil.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs.

  2. Soak the bread or cracker crumbs in a little milk until soft.

  3. Chop the white meat of the chicken very finely.

  4. Stir the chopped chicken into the mashed egg yolks.

  5. Add the soaked crumbs and mix well.

Finish the soup

  1. Slowly stir in the hot cream.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed yolks give the soup a thick, creamy body and rich flavor.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Soaked crumbs thicken the mixture and help bind the filling together.
Hot cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Chicken
Provides the main meat and savory flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the hot cream. Adding cold or rapidly poured cream can cause dairy to curdle or separate, so adding it slowly while stirring keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, onion, egg, bread, milk, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, onion, egg, bread, milk, 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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