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Drink

Queens Soup

A creamy chicken soup thickened with cornflour and ground almonds, finished with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Queens Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop a little chicken very small.

  2. Add the chopped chicken and the white of the hard-boiled egg to a bowl.

  3. Rub the yolk of the hard-boiled egg through a sieve and mix it with the ground almonds and cornflour.

  4. Combine this mixture with the milk.

Make the soup

  1. Add the milk mixture to the hot chicken stock and stir until boiling.

  2. Boil for three minutes.

  3. Once the cornflour is cooked, remove the pan from the heat.

  4. Add the chicken and egg to heat through, but do not boil.

  5. Serve very hot.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + almondtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

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

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 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

Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries all the other flavours.
Cornflour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-filled texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup's flavour and texture.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds richness and body; the sieved yolk blends smoothly into the mixture.
Ground almonds
Adds nutty flavour and a slightly thickened, grainy body to the soup.
Chopped chicken
Provides savoury meat and substance in the finished soup.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the chicken and egg. Cornflour thickens when heated, but the chicken and egg only need to warm through. Boiling again can toughen the chicken and egg white and can break up the smooth, thickened texture.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, milk. 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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