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89 Bonne Femme and Other Egg Soups

A light soup of stock, sago, and egg yolks, optionally enriched with cream and greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

89 Bonne Femme and Other Egg Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Wash the sago and simmer it in water until transparent and tender.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the sago into the boiling stock or broth along with the cream.

  2. In a separate bowl, stir the yolks of the eggs one by one into a teacupful of the broth.

  3. Carefully stir the egg mixture into the soup just before serving to avoid curdling.

  4. Add shreds of lettuce, sorrel, asparagus tips, or French beans if desired.

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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Veal + lettucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together383 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl sago
Swells as it cooks, giving the soup body and a tender, chewy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the broth and thicken it gently when heated, giving a smooth, velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the soup. Egg yolks curdle if they get too hot. Tempering them with a little warm broth first, then stirring them in just before serving, keeps the soup smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cream, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, 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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