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Egg Soup

A creamy milk-based soup with eggs, onion, butter, flour, and seasonings, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk with the onion.

  2. In a bowl, blend the butter and flour, then moisten with a little hot milk.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Let it boil once, then strain into a heated tureen.

Serve

  1. Place the eggs on top of the soup and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  2. Serve carefully to avoid breaking the eggs.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a rich, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk slightly so the soup has more body.
Eggs
Poached on top of the soup, they add substance and a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and butter mixture into the boiling milk. Flour mixed with a little hot liquid first, then stirred in, disperses evenly; added dry or to cold milk it forms lumps. Boiling then lets the starch thicken the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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