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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A French soup made with veal stock, chicken bones, rice, onion, spices, and finished with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine veal stock, chicken bones, rice, onion, salt, pepper, and mace in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken meat for 30 minutes.

  2. Pound the boiled chicken into a paste, adding a little veal stock.

  3. Rub the paste through a coarse sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve, rubbing the rice through as well.

  2. Add the chicken paste.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil again.

  4. Stir in the hot milk or cream just 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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Veal stock
Provides the main liquid and savory meaty body of the soup.
Raw rice
Breaks down during simmering and rubbing through a sieve, thickening the soup.
Chicken
Adds meaty flavor, and its paste gives the soup body and richness.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk or cream. Stirring in hot milk or cream just before serving, rather than boiling it for long, helps prevent curdling and keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, chicken, rice, onion, pepper, milk):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, chicken, rice, onion, pepper, milk. 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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