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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A French soup made with bread, fowl, almonds, egg yolks, and cream, seasoned with pepper, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread in the clear stock.

  2. Pound the fowl breast, sweet almonds, bitter almonds, and egg yolks in a mortar until smooth.

  3. Add the soaked bread and stock to the paste.

  4. Mix in the cream or milk.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and spices.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain through a fine sieve.

  2. Keep the coulis hot in a bain-marie until serving.

  3. Pour over toasted slices of bread 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Bread + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of roast fowl
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the soup base.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the smooth paste.
Bread
Soaked in stock, it adds body and helps the purée thicken.
Cream or milk
Adds fat and softness, giving the soup a smooth, rich texture.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and a creamy, smooth body when pounded.

The step that matters

Pounding to a smooth paste before adding liquid. If the fowl, almonds and yolks are not pounded fully smooth, the strained soup will stay grainy and uneven. Thorough grinding breaks down fibres and fats so the purée blends evenly with the stock.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, cream, pepper. 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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