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Duchess Soup

A creamy soup made with white and brown stock, rice flour, egg yolks, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Duchess Soup

Why it works: Pepper and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Duchess Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine white stock and brown stock in a pot.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Whisk in the rice flour until smooth.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the strained mixture over the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Do not allow the soup to boil after adding the egg yolks.

  3. Before serving, stir in the whipped cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and enrich it, giving a smooth, rich body when heated gently.
Rice flour
Thickens the stock so it becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Do not let the soup boil after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; boiling can scramble them into grainy specks and curdle the soup, ruining its smooth texture.

“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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