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Italian Soup

A light soup made with stock, tarragon wine, sherry, and poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and wine work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 521 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Italian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, bring 2 quarts of stock to a boil with 1 teaspoon of salt until bright.

  2. In a tureen, combine 2 teaspoons of tarragon wine and ½ cup of sherry.

  3. Pour the hot soup into the tureen.

Serve

  1. Carefully add poached eggs without breaking them.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Tarragon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Tarragon + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Tarragon + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Wine + sherrytop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Poached new-laid eggs
Provide the main body of the dish and set gently in the hot soup as a garnish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the dish.
Sherry or good white wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the broth, lifting its flavour.

The step that matters

Carefully add poached eggs without breaking them. Eggs are delicate and their proteins set quickly, so a rough pour or stirring can tear the whites and cloud the soup. Lower them in gently while the soup is hot.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sherry, egg):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sherry, egg. 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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