Name: Consomme a LA Princesse
Ingredients: 1 quart clear soup; 2 tablespoons cucumber, cut into pea shapes; 12 very small quenelles of calves' brains; croutons of fried bread

Why it works: Cucumber and bread work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 344 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Consomme a LA Princesse

Ingredients

1 quart clear soup
2 tablespoons cucumber, cut into pea shapes
12 very small quenelles of calves' brains
croutons of fried bread

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

Cook the cucumber in stock until tender.
Rinse the cucumber with warm water.

Assemble and serve

Place the cucumber in a tureen.
Pour the clear soup over the cucumber.
Add the quenelles of calves' brains.
Serve with croutons of fried bread.

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.

Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together344 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

Cucumber: Adds a crisp, fresh bite and a cool contrast to the hot soup.
Clear soup: Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the flavour of the dish.
Calves' brains quenelles: Gives a soft, delicate texture that contrasts with the clear broth.
Fried bread croutons: Provides a crunchy, golden texture against the smooth soup.

“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.