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Potage a LA Reine

A creamy French soup made with chicken, rice, vegetables, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Start the broth

  1. Boil the fowl in 3 quarts of water until tender.

  2. Skim off the fat.

Add the vegetables and flavourings

  1. Add the rice, carrot, turnip, celery, and onion cooked in butter for 15 minutes.

  2. Skim the butter from the vegetables.

  3. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  4. Add the cinnamon, mace, and cloves.

  5. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop and pound the fowl's breast finely.

  2. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  3. Add the pounded breast.

  4. Strain again.

  5. Return to heat and add salt, pepper, and cream.

  6. Boil once.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens during cooking.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly and smooths its texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Return to heat and add salt, pepper, and cream.. Cream can separate and turn grainy if it boils hard or for long. Bring the soup back to heat, add the cream, and boil only once, briefly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, cinnamon. 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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