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Swiss Soup

A light soup made with chicken stock, egg yolks, flour, milk, and topped with whipped cream.

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 ↓

Swiss Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, flour, and milk until smooth.

  2. Heat the chicken stock until boiling hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Slowly add the egg mixture to the hot stock, stirring constantly. Avoid boiling again.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve immediately topped with whipped cream.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and enrich its texture as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Helps stabilise the egg mixture and adds slight body to the broth.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the broth's savoury flavour.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, cool, creamy topping that softens the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot stock. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot or boil. Adding them slowly while stirring constantly tempers the mixture so it thickens smoothly rather than curdling, and the soup should not boil again afterward.

“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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