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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A creamy veal and chicken stock soup with rice, onion, and spices, finished with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine veal stock, chicken bones, rice, onion, salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 1 hour.

Prepare the chicken paste

  1. Meanwhile, boil the chicken meat for 30 minutes.

  2. Pound the boiled chicken to a paste, adding a little veal stock.

  3. Rub the paste through a coarse sieve.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  2. Rub the rice through the sieve as well.

  3. Add the chicken paste to the soup.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the hot milk or cream.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down when rubbed through the sieve, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Chicken
Pounded into a paste and added, giving the soup a rich flavor and smooth body.
Milk or cream
Added at the end to make the soup creamy and mellow its flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the milk or cream. Stir it in just before serving and keep the soup from boiling afterward. Milk and cream can curdle or separate when held at a hard boil, which spoils the smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, chicken, rice, onion, pepper, milk):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, chicken, rice, onion, pepper, milk. 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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