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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A veal and fowl soup thickened with bread, cream, and arrow‑root, seasoned with salt, cayenne, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, stew the veal, ham, herbs, carrots, onions, mace, and peppercorns in 4 quarts of water until reduced to about 5 pints.

  2. Strain the broth and let it cool to remove the fat.

  3. Clean the fowls or pullets, removing any dark spongy substance.

  4. Add the fowls to the veal broth and boil gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  5. Remove the fowls, shred the white meat, and pound it into a fine paste.

  6. Return the fowl bodies to the stock and simmer for 1½ hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Season the soup with salt and cayenne, then strain it again and let it cool.

  2. Soak the bread in a small portion of the stock, then wring out the moisture and mix it with the chicken paste.

  3. Gradually add the stock to the chicken mixture, mixing until smooth.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve, heat it in a clean pot, and stir in 1 to 1½ pints of boiling cream.

  5. If the soup is not thick enough, mix the arrow‑root with cold milk or stock and add it to the soup.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls or pullets
Provide the flavour base and the meat that becomes the smooth, creamy body of the soup.
Bread
Soaked and pounded with the chicken, it adds body and helps thicken the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Arrow-root
A starch that thickens the soup further when it is not thick enough.
Veal
Simmered for hours, it builds the gelatinous body and savoury depth of the stock.

The step that matters

Pounding the chicken into a fine paste. A smooth, fully broken-down paste blends evenly into the stock; lumps left behind give a grainy texture that sieving cannot fully fix.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, onion, bread, cream, milk):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, onion, bread, cream, milk. 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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