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Egg Soup

A lamb leg soup flavored with rice, pepper, salt, and eggs, garnished with parsley and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the leg of lamb in enough water to cover it for about 2 hours.

  2. After 1 hour, skim the surface.

  3. Add the rice, pepper, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. In a tureen, beat the eggs well.

  2. Gradually add the boiling soup to the eggs, stirring constantly.

  3. Serve the lamb with drawn butter.

  4. Garnish with parsley and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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

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

  2. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the soup into a silky, lightly set body when hot broth is added.
Rice
Starch from the rice adds body and thickens the broth as it cooks.
Leg of lamb
Simmering the lamb gives the broth its meaty flavour and richness.
Drawn butter
Melted butter served with the lamb adds richness and fat to each bite.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling soup to the eggs. Adding hot broth slowly while stirring constantly warms the eggs gradually, so they thicken smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

“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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