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Potage X LA Reins

A hearty soup made from stewed veal, ham, herbs, carrots, onions, mace, and white peppercorns, finished with minced fowl flesh.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 21,599 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, stew the veal, ham, sweet herbs, carrots, onions, mace, and white peppercorns in 4 quarts of water until reduced to about 5 pints.

  2. Strain the broth and let it cool to remove the fat.

Cook the fowls

  1. Clean the fowls or pullets, removing any dark spongy substance.

  2. Pour the veal broth over the fowls and boil gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  3. Remove the fowls, take off all the white flesh, mince it finely, and pound it into a paste.

  4. Cover the paste with a basin until needed.

  5. Return the bodies of the fowls to the stock and stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  6. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + macetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Veal + hamtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Veal + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,015 recipes

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

  5. Onion + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together7,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Long stewing releases gelatin and flavour, giving the broth body and a rich savoury base.
Fowls or pullets
Simmering the birds in the broth flavours the soup and yields tender meat for the paste.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness and aromatic depth into the broth during long stewing.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they soften during stewing.

The step that matters

Boil the fowls gently. Gentle simmering keeps the broth clear and the meat tender; vigorous boiling would toughen the flesh and cloud the stock.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, onion):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, onion. 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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