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Soup

Potage a LA Bonne Femme

A vegetable soup made with lettuce, sorrel, herbs, cucumber, butter, stock, eggs, cream, and served over toasted French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Potage a LA Bonne Femme

Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 247 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage a LA Bonne Femme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and finely shred the lettuces, sorrel, tarragon, and chervil.

  2. Peel the cucumber, slice it thinly, and shred it.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the shredded vegetables and herbs, and cook for 5 minutes without discoloring.

  2. Sprinkle in the salt and castor sugar, add the stock, and let it boil slowly until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Beat the eggs and cream together.

  4. Remove the stewpan from the heat and let it cool slightly.

  5. Strain in the egg and cream mixture, return to the heat, and stir until the eggs are cooked.

Serve

  1. Dry the crust of the French roll in the oven for a few minutes, then cut it into small round pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a tureen and pour the hot soup over them.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sorrel + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Provide the bulk of the soup and soften into tender, mild greenery as they simmer.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic flavour that brightens the soup.
Eggs
Thicken the soup as they cook gently, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and softness, moderating the egg's setting into a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the vegetables soften gently in the pan.
White stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables and herbs.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream mixture. Eggs set when heated, so the pan must be off the heat and cooled slightly before the mixture goes in. Returning it to a boil can curdle the eggs and leave the soup grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, sorrel, tarragon, chervil, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, sorrel, tarragon, chervil, butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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