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Soup a LA Royale

A French beef soup with a custard topping, simmered with onions, carrots, celery, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine onions, carrots, and celery in a large stewpan, then add the beef pieces.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook over low heat for 1 hour, ensuring it does not burn.

  3. Add 4 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove the scum and fat.

  5. Add the bay leaf, allspice, herbs, soy sauce, and cayenne pepper.

  6. Simmer for 4 hours.

  7. Strain the soup through a cloth.

  8. Remove the fat with a piece of clean paper.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, milk, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Steam for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Cut the custard into small diamond-shaped pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a tureen.

  3. Pour the boiling soup over the custard.

  4. Serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides savory flavor and body to the broth as it simmers.
Egg yolks
Set when steamed, giving the custard garnish its firm, tender structure.
Onions
Build the aromatic sweet base of the broth as they cook slowly.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Celery
Contributes savory, herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Steam the custard gently. Egg yolks set into a smooth, tender custard when heated gently; high heat or boiling causes them to curdle and turn grainy and rubbery.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, beef, pepper, allspice, thyme, parsley):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, beef, pepper, allspice, thyme, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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