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Soup a LA Reine

A creamy chicken soup with bread crumbs, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Soup a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Place the chickens in a pot with the water, celery seed, and parsley. Boil for about 2 hours.

  2. Remove the chickens and strain the broth through a cloth.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the strained broth.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the skin, gristle, bones, and fat from the chickens, leaving only the lean meat.

  2. Grind the chicken meat and mix it with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to form a paste.

  3. Press the mixture through a coarse sieve and stir it into the stock.

  4. Let it simmer for 10 minutes, stirring continuously.

  5. Pour the soup into a heated tureen and serve hot.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat and flavour for the stock and the body of the soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Their yolks bind the ground chicken into a smooth, thickened paste.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in the broth, they help thicken the soup and give it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring while the soup simmers. Once the chicken paste is stirred into the stock, it can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring keeps it evenly dispersed and prevents sticking.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, egg, cream, parsley, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, egg, cream, parsley, pepper. 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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