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Soup

Bonne Femme and Other Egg Soups

A light soup made with stock, pearl sago, eggs, and optional greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Bonne Femme and Other Egg Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Wash the sago and simmer it in water until transparent and tender.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the sago into the boiling stock or broth along with the cream.

  2. Stir the yolks of eggs one by one into a teacupful of the broth, then add this mixture to the soup.

  3. Add shreds of lettuce, sorrel, asparagus tips, or French beans as desired.

  4. Do not allow the soup to boil after adding the egg mixture to prevent curdling.

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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Veal + lettucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together383 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 yolks
Thicken the soup and enrich it with richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Pearl sago
Adds a soft, tender chewiness and body to the broth as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Do not let the soup boil after adding the egg mixture. Egg proteins coagulate when overheated, so boiling after the yolks are added can curdle the soup and leave it grainy. Tempering the yolks with hot broth first and keeping the heat gentle protects its smooth texture.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cream, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, 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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