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Egg Soup

Egg Soup is a broth made from beef or veal, eggs, parsley, and optional rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the beef or veal with pepper and salt until well cooked.

  2. Strain the broth into a tureen.

Finish the soup

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with chopped parsley.

  2. Pour the hot broth over the eggs while stirring continuously.

  3. If desired, return the strained soup to the pot and add rice.

  4. Cook until the rice is 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the hot broth as they cook, giving the soup a creamy, silky body.
Beef or veal
Slow boiling releases flavour and gelatin into the broth, giving the soup its savoury base.
Rice
Rice absorbs some liquid as it cooks, adding body and making the soup more filling.

The step that matters

Pour the hot broth over the eggs while stirring continuously. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks while stirring gradually raises their temperature, so they thicken smoothly. Pouring too fast or without stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, egg, rice):

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, egg, rice. 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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