Skip to main content
Main

Creme Devolaille

A creamy chicken soup made with fowl, giblet broth, butter, flour, gelatine, ham or bacon, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Creme Devolaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lightly roast the young fowl and let it cool.

  2. Remove all the meat from the fowl.

  3. Crush the carcass, skin, trimmings, and giblets on a board.

  4. Prepare giblet broth as described in the cookbook.

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, combine 3 cups of giblet broth with ½ ounce of butter and ½ ounce of flour, stirring well.

  2. Add ¾ ounce of gelatine to the mixture and stir until dissolved.

Finish the mixture

  1. Mince and pound the fowl meat with an equal weight of cooked ham or bacon.

  2. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt and white pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Ham + white peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together535 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + white peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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

Young fowl
Provides the main meat, which gives the cream its body and flavour.
Giblet broth
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth of the cream.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the base.
Flour
Thickens the broth with the butter, giving the base body.
Gelatine
Sets the cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Cooked ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and helps bind the pounded meat.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine in the hot base. Gelatine must fully dissolve in the warm liquid before setting; undissolved granules leave gritty or uneven patches and weak setting. Stirring until clear ensures an even, smooth texture once chilled.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, ham. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes