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Lorraine, or the Fashionable White Soup

A creamy white soup made with almonds, chicken, egg yolks, bread crumbs, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lorraine, or the Fashionable White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and pound them in a mortar with a little water to make a paste.

  2. Mince the white part of the cold roast fowl very fine.

  3. Combine the minced fowl, egg yolks, and bread crumbs in a bowl.

Make the soup

  1. Add this mixture to 1 pint of plain white soup along with lemon peel, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil, then add 1 quart of boiling hot stock.

  3. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then strain the soup.

  4. Gradually add 1 quart of boiled cream to the strained soup.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Pounded into a paste, they give the soup its body and creamy, nutty flavour.
Cold roast fowl
Minced finely, it adds savoury body and substance to the soup.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Their fat and fine texture help enrich the soup and give it a smooth body.
Bread crumbs
Help thicken the mixture and add body to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness, fat and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiled cream to the strained soup. Adding cream all at once to a hot soup can cause it to curdle or separate. Adding it slowly, with the soup well mixed, helps the cream blend in smoothly and keeps the texture even.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, bread, lemon, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, bread, lemon, nutmeg, 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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