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Potage a LA Reine—

A creamy chicken soup with shredded chicken, egg yolks, bread crumbs, and optional grains.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 630 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine—

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the chickens and remove the lungs, then wash them clean.

  2. Place the chickens in a pan with the parsley and moisten with boiling broth.

  3. Stew for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the chickens.

Make the soup base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the broth.

  2. Shred the chicken flesh.

  3. Pound it with the egg yolks and soaked bread crumbs.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Heat the cream in a pot, stirring continuously until it boils.

  6. Pour the cream into the soup mixture.

  7. If using, pre-cook the barley, rice, or vermicelli in broth.

  8. Add them to the soup when done.

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. Parsley + barleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together630 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main body of the soup and its rich, meaty flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, rich body.
Bread crumbs
Bind the pounded mixture and add body to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness, fat and a smooth, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding and sieving break the cooked chicken and bread into fine particles, so the soup becomes smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, cream, barley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, cream, barley. 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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