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Soup Loraine

A savory soup made with almonds, veal broth, roasted fowl, poached egg yolks, onions, celery, spinach, lettuce, parsley, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 352 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Soup Loraine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and beat them finely in a mortar with a little water to prevent oiling.

  2. Pound the white meat of the roasted fowl with the yolks of the poached eggs until fine.

  3. In a pot, pour the veal broth and skim off all fat to keep it very white.

Make the soup

  1. In a deep stewpan, melt the butter until it stops making noise.

  2. Add the chopped onions and shake them in the pan.

  3. Add the celery, spinach, lettuce, and parsley; shake well for 15 minutes.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour and stir everything together.

  5. Pour in the water and add the dry crust, ground pepper, and ground mace; stir well.

  6. Let it boil gently for about 30 minutes, then remove from heat.

  7. Beat the yolks of the eggs and stir in the vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a soup dish and serve.

  2. If in season, add a pint of boiled peas for extra flavor.

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. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground into a fine paste that thickens and gives the soup a creamy body.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries their flavor into the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the broth as it simmers.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add richness and smoothness to its texture.
Onions
Build aroma and sweetness as they cook in the butter.
Veal broth
Forms the savory liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the broth and add the egg-vinegar mixture carefully. Skimming removes fat so the soup stays light and very white. Egg yolks can curdle if they are added to very hot liquid without care, so the mixture should be stirred in gently and not allowed to boil afterward.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, meat, egg, veal, butter, onion, spinach):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, meat, egg, veal, butter, onion, spinach. 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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