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Potage a LA Reim, or Chicken Soup

A French chicken soup with rice, carrots, onions, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reim, or Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the old fowl in 4 quarts of water until reduced to 2 quarts.

  2. Add the carrot, onion with cloves, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Remove the chicken and strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the chicken breast finely and rub it with the cooked rice through a sieve.

  2. Add the mixture to the soup, skimming off any grease.

  3. Heat the soup until scalding, then stir in the cream.

  4. Serve immediately without boiling after adding the cream.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Old fowl
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and body as it simmers into the broth.
Cooked rice
Rubbed through a sieve, it thickens the soup and gives it a smooth texture.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream off the heat, then do not boil. Boiling cream after it is added can cause it to separate and curdle, leaving the soup grainy instead of smooth and rich.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, clove, nutmeg, rice, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, clove, nutmeg, rice, cream. 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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