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Soup

Puree or Cream Soup

A creamy soup made by puréeing cooked fowl, game, vegetables, or fish, then enriched with egg yolks, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Puree or Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cook the fowl, game, vegetables, or fish in cold water with salt until tender.

  2. Sift the cooked ingredients through a sifter to obtain a clear pap.

  3. Skim off any fat.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream, and butter to create the liaison.

  2. Add some hot pap to the liaison.

  3. Pour the mixture into the saucepan.

  4. Place the saucepan on low heat and stir gently.

  5. Do not allow the soup to boil after adding the liaison.

  6. Add vegetables.

  7. Cook the vegetables until tender.

  8. 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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 into a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the soup's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Do not allow the soup to boil after adding the liaison. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when they get too hot, leaving the soup grainy instead of smooth. Keeping the heat low and stirring gently lets the yolks thicken it evenly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, leek, carrot, parsley, turnip, cream, egg):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, leek, carrot, parsley, turnip, cream, egg. 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.

More cream soup recipes

Tapioca 33Chicken 27Barley 16Celery 16Tomato 16Veal 13 See all 22 →

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