Skip to main content
Main

Dauphine Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Mix the strong chicken consommé with the eggs and parsley in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Prepare two funnel-shaped papers.

  3. Fill the papers with the paste.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the peas in a pot of boiling consommé for five minutes.

  2. Strain the peas.

  3. Add the strained peas to three quarts of strong bright consommé.

  4. Boil gently for another five minutes.

  5. Add tarragon and chervil.

  6. Let it boil briefly before serving.

  7. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese on the side.

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 so the small peas hold their shape when boiled.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the paste bind and firm up when cooked.

The step that matters

Boil the peas in consommé for five minutes. Egg paste must be cooked in simmering liquid, not a hard boil, so the eggs set firm without becoming rubbery or breaking apart in the soup.

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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes