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Soupe a LA Reine

A chicken soup with diced chicken, onion, flour, rice, egg yolks, and cold milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Soupe a LA Reine

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Soupe a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens in water with thyme, sweet bay, and parsley until cooked.

  2. Remove the chickens.

  3. Cut the breasts into small dice-sized pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Fry a few pieces of onion in a pan without coloring them.

  2. Add a little flour to the pan.

  3. Add the chicken broth to the pan.

  4. Add a little rice to the pan.

  5. Add the chopped chicken meat and bones to the pan.

  6. Boil everything together.

  7. Strain the soup through a colander.

  8. Return the strained soup to the pot.

  9. Bring the soup to a boil, stirring constantly.

  10. Remove the soup from heat.

  11. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cold milk.

  12. Keep the soup warm in a bain-marie.

Serve

  1. Place the diced chicken breasts in a soup dish.

  2. Pour the soup over the diced chicken breasts.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat and broth that form the base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the broth.
Rice
Adds body and thickness to the soup as it simmers.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when stirred in off the heat.
Cold milk
Adds richness and mellows the soup when combined with the yolks.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cold milk. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the soup is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding them, and stirring steadily, keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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