Name: Consomme Aux CEufs Files
Ingredients: 1 quart of Consomme; 1 Egg; 2 teaspoons of Flour; 1 tablespoon of Milk; Seasoning to taste

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Consomme Aux CEufs Files

Ingredients

Directions

Bring the consommé to a boil.
In a bowl, mix the egg, flour, milk, and seasoning to form a batter.
Pass the batter through a fine strainer into the boiling consommé to create thread-like shapes.

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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg: Sets into delicate threads when it hits the boiling consommé, giving the soup its texture.
Flour: Thickens the batter slightly so it holds together as it passes through the strainer.
Milk: Loosens the batter so it flows smoothly through the fine strainer.

The step that matters

Passing the batter through the strainer. The batter must be fluid enough to pass through a fine strainer and drop into the boiling consommé. Egg proteins set almost instantly on contact with the hot liquid, so the batter should be poured steadily to form fine threads rather than clumps.

“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.