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Soup

Queen Soup

A soup made from stewed fowls, veal broth, parsley, loaf crumb, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,449 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Queen Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin and clean the fowls, then wash them in warm water.

  2. Stew the fowls in strong veal broth with the parsley for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the fowls and soak the crumb of the loaf in the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the meat off the fowls, discard the skin, and pound the flesh in a mortar.

  2. Add the soaked crumb and the yolks of the hard boiled eggs to the mortar.

  3. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  4. Stir in 1 quart of previously boiled cream.

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. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  3. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

  4. Veal + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,890 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls or chickens
Provide the main body of the soup, with flesh that is pounded and sieved into it.
Veal broth
Supplies the savoury base in which the fowls are stewed and the crumb is soaked.
Crumb of a small loaf
Soaked in broth, it thickens the purée and gives it a smooth body.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Enrich the purée, adding richness and a smooth, thickened texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a smooth, mellow body.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a coarse sieve. Pounded chicken, bread and yolk form a fibrous, lumpy paste unless pressed through a sieve. Forcing it through breaks up the remaining fibres and lumps, giving the smooth texture the soup depends on.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, meat, egg, cream. 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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