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Soup

Lemon Soup

A lemon-flavored soup made with chicken, bread crumbs, herbs, eggs, and cream, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lemon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Combine the cold chicken, bread crumbs, herbs, and egg yolk to form forcemeat balls.

  2. Poach the forcemeat balls in the chicken broth for about 10 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream or milk, eggs, lemon juice, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Thicken the soup with the cream mixture, stirring well.

  3. Return the forcemeat balls to the soup and serve with sippets of toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the soup into a light, silky body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and bind with the chicken, giving the forcemeat balls a tender texture.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich broth and cream.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with the cream mixture, stirring well. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the egg and cream mixture to very hot soup can scramble it. Stirring constantly while adding it helps distribute the eggs evenly for a smooth, thickened result.

“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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