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Soup Maigre

A light milk-based soup thickened with flour and egg yolks, seasoned with celery salt and garnished with asparagus, carrots, peas, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and boil for 8 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. In a tureen, beat the egg yolks with a spoon.

  4. Pour the soup gently over the egg yolks, stirring quickly.

Garnish and serve

  1. Add celery salt, asparagus tips, diced carrots, and peas as a garnish.

  2. Serve with croutons.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Asparagus + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  3. Celery + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together378 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Asparagus + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together571 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the soup body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add richness and body when stirred in.

The step that matters

Pour the soup gently over the egg yolks, stirring quickly. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid too fast or unevenly. Pouring slowly while stirring gradually warms the yolks so the soup becomes smooth and thick instead of curdled.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, celery, asparagus, carrot):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, celery, asparagus, carrot. 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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