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Soup

A Maigre Onion Soup

A soup of thinly sliced onions, carrots, celery, and turnip simmered in butter and water, thickened with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Maigre Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry the vegetables

  1. Slice the onions, carrots, celery, and turnip very thin.

  2. Fry the sliced vegetables in butter until browned.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add boiling water, anchovies, mace, peppercorns, and salt to the pot.

  2. Boil until the bread is reduced to a pulp.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and return to the heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the soup well and thicken with the egg yolks.

  2. Serve with fried bread cut into dice or a French roll.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Onions
Form the sweet, savory base of the soup as they brown and soften.
Butter
Carries the frying, adds richness, and helps the vegetables brown.
White bread
Breaks down during boiling to give the soup body and thickness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the finished soup and add richness and a smooth texture.
Anchovies
Add deep, salty savoury flavour that rounds out the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the base of the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the soup boils after they go in they can curdle and turn grainy. Remove the soup from direct heat or keep it below a simmer while stirring the yolks in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, celery, turnip, butter, bread, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, celery, turnip, butter, bread, egg. 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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