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Dauphine Soup

A French soup made with chicken consommé, eggs, parsley, tarragon, chervil, and served with grated Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dauphine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the consommé with the eggs and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Stir in the chopped parsley.

  3. Prepare a funnel-shaped paper and fill it with the paste.

  4. Force the paste out onto a buttered stewpan lid in the shape of small peas.

Cook the peas and serve

  1. Boil the consommé in a stewpan and shake the peas into it.

  2. Let them boil gently for 5 minutes, then strain them.

  3. Add the peas to 3 quarts of strong chicken consommé and boil gently for another 5 minutes.

  4. Add tarragon and chervil, then serve with grated Parmesan cheese.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Chicken + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,846 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + tarragontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together619 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the paste and bind the small peas so they hold their shape while cooking.
Egg yolks
Add richness and firmness to the paste, helping the peas hold together in the broth.
Chicken consommé
Forms the liquid base of the paste and the soup broth, giving savory flavor.

The step that matters

Forcing the paste into peas. If the paste is too loose it will not hold its shape and will break up in the boiling consommé. Eggs set when heated, so the peas must be cooked gently to keep their form.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, tarragon, chervil, parmesan cheese):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Basilfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, tarragon, chervil, parmesan cheese. 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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