Koninginnesoep

In my grandmother's second notebook, Koninginnesoep sits between ordinary kippensoep, chicken soup, and a sherry pudding that only appeared when the good glasses had been polished. That is the first secret of it: the queen's soup lived in ordinary houses. It was the course that made a Sunday dinner feel like company had been expected, even when the company was only family.

The name already tells you it came dressed from elsewhere. Koningin is queen; the older French phrase is potage à la reine, a courtly chicken soup, pale and smooth, made for tables where soup wore titles. The Dutch did what Dutch kitchens often do to imported grandeur: kept the useful part, took off the lace cuffs, and put it into a pan that could feed six. Roux, chicken stock, a little cream, peas, carrot. Royal in name only. That is why I like it.

What matters here is restraint. Brown the flour and you have told the wrong story; this soup wants a pale roux, clean chicken stock, small vegetables cut evenly, and mace or nutmeg only as a whisper from the spice cupboard. Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple. A dish without its story is half a meal, but a soup with too much story in the pot is just confusion. Let it be gentle, ivory, and generous.