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Clear Soup with Royale Paste

A clear soup thickened with a custard of egg yolks, butter, and nutmeg, served with custard strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Clear Soup with Royale Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare clear soup as directed in the proper recipe.

  2. In a bowl, beat together egg yolks, ½ cup clear soup, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Butter a shallow dish and pour the custard mixture into it, making it about ⅛ inch thick.

Make the royale

  1. Place the dish in a pan of warm water and steam until firm.

  2. Cool the custard, then cut it into little strips.

Serve

  1. Add the strips to the clear soup and serve immediately.

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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Egg yolks
Coagulate when steamed, setting the custard into a firm, sliceable royale.
Clear soup
Liquid base that the custard is made with and the soup the strips are served in.
Butter
Greases the dish so the set custard releases cleanly.

The step that matters

Steaming the custard until firm. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle heat; too much heat makes the custard curdle and turn rough or spongy, so steam it gently in warm water.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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