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Potage a LA 'bonne Femme,' or Soupe a L'oseille

A savory soup made with butter, parsley, lettuce, onion, sorrel, flour, water, cream, egg yolks, mashed potato, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 317 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage a LA 'bonne Femme,' or Soupe a L'oseille

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter, parsley, lettuce, onion, and sorrel. Cover and stew gently for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling water while stirring continuously.

Finish and serve

  1. In a tureen, mix the egg yolks with a little of the cream or milk.

  2. Add the remaining cream, rubbed smooth with the mashed potato, to the soup along with the seasonings.

  3. Pour some boiling soup over the egg mixture and mix well.

  4. Add the diced bread, then pour in the rest of the soup. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 5 minutes before serving.

  5. Optionally, press the soup through a sieve before serving.

  6. Stock can be used instead of 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.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Gives the soup its sharp, lemony acidity and bright green colour.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, giving it a smooth, velvety body when heated gently.
Cream or rich milk
Adds fat and richness, softening the sharpness of the sorrel.
Mashed potato
Adds body and a smooth texture, helping the soup feel thicker.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and vegetables.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps soften the vegetables during stewing.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg yolks. Adding hot soup to the yolks gradually, while mixing, warms them without scrambling. Pouring hot soup in all at once or boiling the mixture can curdle the eggs and leave the soup grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, lettuce, sorrel, nutmeg, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, lettuce, sorrel, nutmeg, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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