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Soup

Potage a LA Bonne Femme

A creamy lettuce and herb soup with cucumber, eggs, and a toasted French roll crust.

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 the slices.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the shredded vegetables and herbs and sweat for 5 minutes without discoloring.

  3. Sprinkle in the salt and castor sugar.

  4. Add the stock and boil slowly until the vegetables are tender.

Thicken and finish

  1. Beat the eggs and cream together.

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

  3. Strain the egg and cream mixture into the stewpan.

  4. Return to the heat and stir until the eggs are cooked.

Prepare the crust and serve

  1. Dry the crust of the French roll in the oven for a few minutes, then cut it into small 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
Form the bulk of the soup and give it a soft, tender body when cooked.
Butter
Fat that gently cooks the vegetables and carries flavour without browning them.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the soup into a smooth, lightly set texture when gently heated.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the egg-thickened texture.
White stock
Liquid base that cooks the vegetables and forms the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Return the egg and cream mixture to the heat gently. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heating; if the soup gets too hot, the eggs scramble and turn grainy instead of forming a smooth, creamy texture.

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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