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Soup

Wine Soup with Lemon and Trench Rolls

A soup made with wine, lemon, water, and French rolls, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Wine Soup with Lemon and Trench Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Place the French rolls in a saucepan with the lemon rind and juice.

  2. Cover with water and boil until it forms a thin paste.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

  4. Add the white wine, sugar, and salt, then stir over heat until boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. In a soup tureen, beat the egg yolks, then pour the boiling wine mixture over them while stirring.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

French rolls
Break down into a thin paste that thickens the soup body.
White wine
Forms the main liquid and carries the soup's flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when stirred into the hot wine mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet wine flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling wine mixture over the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the hot liquid is poured in too fast without constant stirring, the yolks can scramble into lumps. Stirring while pouring tempers the yolks so the soup stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, 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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