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Egg Soup

A savory soup made with onions, butter, water, flour, milk, salt, pepper, sugar, egg yolks, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until light brown.

  2. Add 3 pints of water and reduce to 1 quart by boiling.

  3. Strain out the onions and set them aside.

  4. Boil the liquid and mix 1 tablespoon of flour with ½ cup of milk.

  5. Add the flour mixture, salt, pepper, and sugar to the boiling liquid.

  6. Stir until the soup thickens, then remove from heat.

  7. Gradually stir in the yolks of 4 eggs.

Serve

  1. Place the pulled bread or dried roll slices in a soup tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread and serve.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 it with fat and richness when stirred in gradually.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes body and holds together.
Butter
Fat that browns the onions and adds richness to the soup.
Onions
Flavour base that is fried and then strained out of the soup.
Bread
Soaks up the soup and gives the dish a soft, substantial texture when served.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the yolks of 4 eggs.. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding slowly while stirring tempers the yolks so they thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, pepper, sugar, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, sugar, egg, bread. 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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