Skip to main content
Main

Soup a LA Reine

A creamy chicken soup with almonds, bread crumbs, and sugar, served over a loaf crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Soup a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the pot and pull the meat from the bones.

  3. Pound the chicken meat with the almonds until smooth.

Make the soup

  1. Return the mixture to the pot with the bread crumbs and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Rub the soup through a sieve.

  3. Add the sugar, a little salt, and the cream.

Serve

  1. Place the crust of the loaf in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Bread + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and protein of the soup, thickened into a smooth purée.
Sweet almonds
Pounded into the chicken to add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the soup as it simmers.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a softer, velvety texture.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Rub the soup through a sieve. Pushing the simmered mixture through a sieve breaks down any remaining fibres and lumps, giving the smooth texture the soup depends on. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy result.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, cream, sugar, veal):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, cream, sugar, veal. 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.

More soup à la reine recipes

Rabbit 9 See all 19 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes