Skip to main content
Main

Potage a LA Reine

A French chicken soup with bacon, almonds, and quenelles, served with peas or asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and stock

  1. Slice the bacon and place it in a stewpan with the vegetables and herbs.

  2. Truss the chicken as for boiling and place it on top of the bacon.

  3. Season the chicken with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour in 1 quart of stock, cover and let reduce slowly.

  5. Add the remaining stock and boil slowly.

  6. Skim the surface.

  7. Continue boiling until the chicken is tender.

  8. Remove the chicken and discard the skin and bones.

Make the meat and almond garnish

  1. Pound the meat with breadcrumbs.

  2. Season the meat with salt and nutmeg.

  3. Moisten the meat with stock.

  4. Rub the meat through a fine sieve and return it to the stewpan.

  5. Peel the almonds and pound them.

  6. Boil the almonds in milk.

  7. Strain the almond mixture through a cloth.

  8. Add the almond mixture to the soup just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with small chicken quenelles and a handful of freshly-cooked peas or asparagus points.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat that is pounded and sieved to thicken and enrich the soup.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the pounded meat so it can be rubbed smooth and body the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the finished soup.
Almonds
Add a creamy texture and a delicate nutty flavour when infused in milk.
Milk
Carries the almond flavour and softens the soup into a creamy finish.

The step that matters

Rub the meat through a fine sieve. Pushing the pounded meat through a fine sieve breaks it into fine particles, giving the soup a smooth texture instead of grainy lumps.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, butter, meat):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, butter, meat. 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 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes