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Fowl and Carrot Soup

A soup made from a whole fowl, carrots, egg yolks, bread, butter, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fowl and Carrot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl and broth

  1. Steep the fowl in hot water.

  2. Remove the fowl from the water and wipe it well.

  3. Strain the steeping water through a cloth.

  4. Return the fowl to the pot.

  5. Add the minced carrots to the pot.

  6. Boil everything in the pot.

  7. Season with salt to taste.

  8. Season with butter to taste.

  9. Pass the soup through a fine sieve.

  10. Enrich the soup with egg yolks.

Thicken and serve

  1. Place slices of bread in a tureen.

  2. Lay the fowl on top of the bread in the tureen.

  3. While the soup is boiling, cut a few carrots.

  4. Stew the cut carrots in butter.

  5. Add a handful of flour to the stewed carrots.

  6. Pour the soup over the carrots and mix well.

  7. Pour the mixture over the fowl in the tureen.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fowl
Provides the meat and flavour that gives the broth its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and give it a smooth, silky texture when stirred in.
Flour
Thickens the stewed carrots so they bind with the soup.
Bread
Soaks up broth in the tureen, giving a softer base under the fowl.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they cook down.

The step that matters

Enrich the soup with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the soup is boiling. Add them off the heat or with the soup just below a simmer, then stir steadily so the mixture stays smooth.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, flour. 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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