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Jacqueline Soup

A light vegetable soup with rice, peas, carrots, asparagus, and parsley, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Jacqueline Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of three eggs with one cup of milk.

  2. Over low heat, blend in one ounce of flour, stirring until smooth but not too thick.

  3. Gradually add one and a half quarts of boiling chicken broth, stirring well.

Season and finish

  1. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and one tablespoon of minced parsley.

  2. Strain the mixture into a serving pot.

  3. Just before serving, stir in one tablespoon each of boiled rice, cooked green peas, sliced carrots, and chopped asparagus.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Rice + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the soup, adding richness and a silky body when gently heated.
Flour
Thickens the broth, giving it body so it is not watery.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, mellowing the flavour of the broth.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the broth to the egg and milk mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they get too hot or are mixed with hot liquid too quickly. Adding the boiling broth gradually while stirring warms the yolks evenly, keeping the soup smooth rather than curdled.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, chicken, pepper, parsley, rice. 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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