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Queen Soup

A chicken soup with almonds, eggs, and milk-soaked bread, seasoned with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Queen Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. In a large pot, cook the onions and celery in butter until softened.

  2. Add parsley, thyme, bay leaf, chicken, and water.

  3. Simmer for 4 hours.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the chicken.

  2. Cut the meat from the wings and breast into dice.

  3. Reserve the dark meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the almonds, egg yolks, and soaked bread.

  2. Pound these with the chicken meat and press through a sieve.

  3. Add the mixture to the strained soup along with boiling cream or milk.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the soup its main meaty flavor and body after long simmering.
Butter
Cooks the onions and celery gently, adding richness and a rounded flavor to the base.
Almonds
Add body, nutty flavor and fat, thickening the puréed soup slightly.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a smooth, creamy body to the puréed soup.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it thickens the purée and gives it a smoother texture.
Cream or milk
Adds richness, sweetness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk. Add the boiling cream or milk to the strained soup and keep it hot without a hard, prolonged boil. Dairy exposed to high heat for long can separate and make the soup grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, butter, parsley, thyme, chicken, egg):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, butter, parsley, thyme, chicken, 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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