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Soup

Potage a LA Reine

A creamy soup made from a whole fowl, rice, vegetables, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potage a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the fowl in 3 quarts of water until tender, ensuring the water only bubbles gently.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Add the rice, carrot, turnip, celery, and onion, which have been cooked slowly in butter for 15 minutes.

  4. Skim the butter from the vegetables.

  5. Stir in the flour, cooking until smooth but not brown.

  6. Add the cinnamon, mace, and cloves.

  7. Cook everything together slowly for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop and pound the fowl's breast very fine.

  2. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  3. Add the pounded breast.

  4. Strain again.

  5. Return to the heat.

  6. Add salt, pepper, and the boiling cream.

  7. Bring to a boil once more before serving.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the rich meat flavour and body of the broth, and the pounded breast thickens the soup.
Rice
Breaks down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it a smooth body.
Butter
Cooks the vegetables gently and carries flavour, giving the base a rich, round taste.
Flour
Thickens the broth with the butter as a roux when stirred in and cooked until smooth.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Keep the broth at a gentle bubble. Vigorous boiling makes the fowl tough and cloudy, and it can break down the broth's texture. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the soup clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, cinnamon. 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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