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Potage a LA Bonne Femme

A French soup of onion, sorrel, lettuce, chervil, stock, bread, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Potage a LA Bonne Femme

Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 247 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage a LA Bonne Femme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the sliced onion. Cook until the onion is half done without browning.

  2. Add the sorrel, lettuce, chervil, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Stir until the vegetables are nearly done.

  3. Stir in the sugar and ½ cup of stock. Let it reduce to a glaze.

  4. Add 1 quart of stock and bring to a boil. Set aside until serving.

Prepare the bread

  1. Dry the bread slices in the oven until thoroughly dried.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, remove excess fat from the soup, bring it to a boil, and stir in the beaten egg yolks mixed with cream or milk.

  2. Pour the soup over the dried bread slices and serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chervil + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries the flavor of the herbs and greens.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the soup.
Lettuce
Adds bulk and a mild, vegetal body as it cooks down.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, creamy richness when stirred in off the heat.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the soup's sharpness.
Bread
Dried slices soak up the broth and give the soup body and texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. If the soup boils after the egg yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stirring them into the hot soup gently, and bringing it back to a boil before adding them, helps keep the texture smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sorrel, lettuce, chervil, pepper, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sorrel, lettuce, chervil, pepper, nutmeg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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