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Potage a LA Flamande, Oh Flemish Soup

A Flemish vegetable soup made with lettuce, sorrel, mint, carrots, celery, chervil, onions, cucumbers, consommé, sauce tourne, asparagus, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage a LA Flamande, Oh Flemish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. In a large basin, combine the lettuce, sorrel, mint, carrots, celery, and chervil.

  2. In a soup pot, fry the onions in clarified butter until they begin to brown.

  3. Add the washed and drained vegetables to the onions and stew gently, turning occasionally.

  4. When the butter starts to fry, remove from heat and cover tightly.

  5. Fry the cucumbers in clarified butter, drain, and add to the other vegetables.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour in the consommé, add a pinch of sugar and salt, and let it boil gently, skimming as needed.

  2. Add more consommé to maintain the original quantity while boiling.

  3. Stir in the sauce tourne and continue boiling gently.

  4. Taste before serving; if not strong enough, add a little veal glaze.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled asparagus points just before serving.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and stir into the soup off the heat.

  3. Serve in a warm tureen to prevent thickening.

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. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Adds soft leafy body and a mild, fresh vegetable flavour to the soup.
Sorrel
Contributes a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the vegetable base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and enrich the soup's texture when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Consommé
Forms the clear savoury liquid that carries all the vegetables.
Clarified butter
Fries the onions and cucumbers, adding fat and nutty browned flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks and cream in off the heat. Egg yolks set when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if the soup is too hot. Adding them off the heat and keeping the soup warm, not boiling, gives a smooth, lightly thickened result.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, sorrel, carrot, celery, chervil, onion, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, sorrel, carrot, celery, chervil, onion, butter. 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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