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Potage a LA Couhte Bouillon

A hearty soup of ham, beef, veal, vegetables, consommé, and sherry, served with fried French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potage a LA Couhte Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Cook ham, beef, veal, spices, and vegetables in a stewpan as for soupe de santé.

  2. Add consommé and sherry, and cook until the meat is tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a pan or basin.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Prepare carrots and celery as for vegetable soup and blanch them.

  2. Stew the carrots and celery in strong consommé.

  3. Stew whole cabbage lettuces like the carrots and celery.

  4. Fry small onions until brown.

  5. Add the fried onions to the soup pot with the other vegetables.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer the soup gently for four hours, skimming as needed.

  2. Cut the crusts of the French rolls into rounds and fry them until light brown.

  3. Place the fried roll rounds in a tureen.

  4. Pour the soup over the fried rolls.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Gives the soup its savoury, meaty flavour as it cooks down.
Beef
Adds rich meaty body and flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Veal
Contributes gelatine and a delicate meaty richness to the soup.
Consommé
Serves as the clear, flavourful liquid that carries the whole soup.
French rolls
Fried rounds soak up the soup while keeping a crisp, golden surface.
Small onions
Browning them deepens the colour and adds sweetness to the soup.

The step that matters

Fry the roll rounds until light brown. Frying creates a crisp, dry crust that holds its shape when the hot soup is poured over. Undercooked rounds turn soggy quickly, while over-browned ones taste bitter.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, veal, sherry, carrot, celery, lettuce):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, veal, sherry, carrot, celery, lettuce. 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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