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Velvet Soup

Velvet Soup is a creamy soup made with stock, cream, egg yolks, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Velvet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, heat the stock until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in ½ cup of cream.

  3. Pour the boiling stock over the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the mixture gently until it reaches a boiling point.

  2. Serve immediately in cups like bouillon.

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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stock
Forms the thin liquid base and carries the main savory flavor of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup as they set with heat and add richness and body.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling stock into the yolks. Egg yolk proteins set at around 65 to 70°C and scramble if they get too hot too fast. Pour the stock slowly while stirring constantly so the yolks warm gradually and the soup stays smooth instead of curdling.

“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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