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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A creamy chicken soup with almonds, bread crumbs, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and stock

  1. Boil the chicken in the stock until tender, then remove it and let the stock cool.

  2. Skim off all the fat from the cooled stock.

  3. Skin the chicken and mince the white meat from the wings and breast.

  4. Pound the minced chicken with the bread-crumbs, moistening with a little hot stock, and pass through a fine sieve.

  5. Soak the almonds in cold stock to cover for a few hours.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock, add the arrowroot blended with cold milk to a paste, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the stock from the soaked almonds, then stir in the sieved chicken and bread mixture along with the boiling cream.

  3. Cover and let it sit by the fire for a few minutes without boiling.

  4. Season with salt to taste, ensuring a delicately-flavored 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. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Bread + arrowroottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chicken + arrowroottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together71 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and flavour that form the body of the soup.
Bread-crumbs
Adds body and helps thicken the pounded chicken mixture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the stock into a smooth, glossy soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Sweet almonds
Contributes a delicate nutty flavour and smooth texture when soaked.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot paste to the stock. Arrowroot must be blended smoothly with cold liquid before it goes into hot stock; otherwise it clumps. Bringing the mixture to a boil activates its thickening, so the soup thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, almond, cream, bread, arrowroot. 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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