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Soup a-LA-Reine

A rich veal and beef broth thickened with almond paste, soaked bread, and egg yolks, served with buttered French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine veal, beef, water, and salt in a large pot. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Add onions, carrots, celery, parsnip, leek, and thyme. Boil until the meat is tender.

  3. Strain the broth through a fine sieve and let it sit for 30 minutes. Skim off the fat.

Make the almond thickening

  1. Boil the cream and pour it over the crumbs of the loaf. Let it soak.

  2. Blanch and finely grind the almonds, adding a little cream to prevent oiling.

  3. In a bowl, combine the almond paste with the soaked bread and egg yolks. Mix until smooth.

  4. Heat the broth and pour it over the almond mixture. Strain through a fine sieve into a saucepan.

  5. Heat the mixture, stirring until it boils. Skim off any froth.

Prepare rolls and serve

  1. Soak the tops of the French rolls in melted butter until crisp but not brown.

  2. Before serving, place a little hot soup over the roll in the bottom of the tureen.

  3. Pour the hot soup into the tureen and serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Parsnip + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together270 recipes

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

  4. Parsnip + leektop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground into a paste that thickens the soup and gives it a rich, nutty body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the almond and bread mixture into a smooth, thick texture.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the bread, helping it blend smoothly into the soup.
French rolls
Toasted with butter, they form crisp, golden bases that hold the hot soup in the tureen.
Veal and beef
Their long simmering releases gelatin and savory flavor that form the body of the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the almond mixture to the broth and heating it. Heating the thickened mixture until it boils is needed to cook the egg yolks and set the soup smooth; the cream added to the almonds prevents them from separating into oil while grinding.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, carrot, celery, parsnip, leek, thyme):

  1. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, carrot, celery, parsnip, leek, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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