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Soupe a LA Reine

A French chicken soup with egg yolk and cream, thickened with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Soupe a LA Reine

Why it works: Chicken and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,314 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soupe a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the chickens and wash them.

  2. Place the chickens in a stewpan with the parsley and pour in the broth.

  3. Let it stew for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the chickens and soak the crumb of the rolls in the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Pick the flesh from the chickens.

  2. Pound the flesh with the egg yolks.

  3. Mix the chicken flesh and egg yolks with the broth and the soaked roll crumbs.

  4. Boil the cream in a separate pot, stirring occasionally until it boils, then pour it into the soup.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Chill and reheat

  1. Chill the soup in the larder until dinner time.

  2. Reheat by placing the stewpan in another with boiling water.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Parsley + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,392 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Chickens
Provide the cooked meat that is pounded into the body of the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and help bind the pounded meat into a smooth mixture.
French rolls
Soaked crumb adds body and helps thicken the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky, smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and keeps the soup fluid.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve. Straining removes fibres, bits of skin and lumps left after pounding, so the soup becomes smooth and fine-textured rather than grainy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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