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Soup a LA Reine

A creamy chicken soup with shredded chicken, cream, and egg yolks, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the broth

  1. Place the whole chicken in a large pot and cover with water.

  2. Add onion, carrots, celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours until the chicken is cooked.

  5. Remove the chicken from the pot.

  6. Strain the broth.

  7. Return the strained broth to the pot.

  8. Shred the chicken meat.

  9. Add the shredded chicken back to the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the heavy cream and egg yolks.

  2. Gradually add a cup of hot broth to the cream mixture.

  3. Stir the cream mixture back into the pot.

  4. Heat gently without boiling.

  5. Serve garnished with chopped parsley.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream enrichment and give the soup a velvety texture when heated gently.
Whole chicken
Gives the broth its main flavour and provides the shredded meat.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the soup boils after they are added, the proteins can scramble, leaving it grainy and curdled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, pepper, cream, egg, parsley):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, pepper, cream, egg, parsley. 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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