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Queen's Soup, or Potage a LA Reine

A soup made from boiled fowls, almonds, egg yolks, and cream, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Queen's Soup, or Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the fowls or chickens.

  2. Clean the fowls or chickens, removing any dark spongy substance inside.

  3. Place the fowls or chickens in a saucepan with the parsley.

  4. Cover them with white stock.

  5. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  6. Remove the birds.

  7. Pick off all the white flesh.

Make the paste

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds to a paste with a little water.

  3. Soak the crumb of the roll in the broth.

  4. Wring the soaked crumb out to remove excess moisture.

  5. Chop the chicken flesh.

  6. Pound the chopped flesh to a paste with the soaked roll, egg yolks, and pounded almonds.

  7. Stir this mixture into the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Heat the strained soup in a clean saucepan.

  3. Mix in the boiled thick cream.

  4. Stir over the fire until it boils.

  5. Add arrowroot if the soup is not thick enough.

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. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + arrowroottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls or young chickens
Provide the flesh and flavour that form the body of the soup.
Sweet and bitter almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the pounded paste that thickens the soup.
Penny roll crumb
Soaked in broth and pounded, it helps bind and thicken the soup.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the paste, adding richness and help thicken the soup.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup if it is not thick enough after the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Stir over the fire until it boils. Once the cream is added, the soup must be heated carefully; boiling after the cream is in helps the soup reach its final smooth, thickened texture, while overheating can cause the cream to separate.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, almond, egg, cream, arrowroot. 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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