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Egg Soup

A light soup made with onions, butter, water, flour, milk, salt, pepper, sugar, egg yolks, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,232 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until light brown.

  2. Add 3 pints of water and reduce to 1 quart by boiling.

  3. Strain out the onions and set them aside.

Thicken and serve

  1. Boil the liquid and mix in flour with milk, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Stir until the soup thickens, then remove from heat.

  3. Gradually stir in the yolks of 4 eggs.

  4. Place pulled bread in a soup tureen and pour the soup over it before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the soup into a smooth, enriched custard-like body when stirred in gently.
Butter
Fat that frying the onions in it carries flavor and browns them for a richer soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup body.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the soup base, mellowing its flavor.
Bread
Soaks up the hot soup in the tureen, giving the dish a soft, substantial texture.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the egg yolks. Adding yolks to very hot liquid can scramble them into lumps. Adding them gradually while stirring tempers the yolks so the soup stays smooth and thick.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, pepper, sugar, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  3. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, sugar, egg, bread. 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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