🇫🇷 France · South-west France (Périgord, Bordelais, Toulouse/Tarn, Quercy)
TourinFrench garlic soup
A south-western French soup built on garlic (sometimes onion or tomato) cooked in duck or goose fat and water, thickened with egg and served over bread.
Origin and history
Tourin is the garlic soup of south-west France, cooked from the Périgord and the Bordelais to Toulouse and the Quercy with the region's duck or goose fat. It belongs to the morning after: wedding guests carried a tourin des noces to the newlyweds, and in Gironde tourin blanchi à l'ivrogne was eaten after a long night of drinking. Old diners end it by faire chabrot, pouring red wine into the last spoonfuls, a custom revived since the late 1980s.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 45 min
- Hands-on
- 20 min
Ingredients
- 30 g (2 tbsp)2 tbsp duck or goose fat, or lard (saindoux)
- 1 head (10–12 cloves) garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
- 1 small onion, optional, thinly sliced
- 1 tbsp (10 g)1 tbsp plain flour
- 1.5 l6⅓ cups water, hot
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 2 eggs, separated
- 1 tbsp wine vinegar, white or red
- 8 thin slices stale country bread (pain de campagne), dried or lightly toasted
- red wine, optional, for chabrot at the table
Method
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1. Melt the fat in a soup pot over low heat. Add the garlic (and the onion, if using) and cook gently for 6–8 minutes, stirring, until soft and pale gold. Do not let the garlic brown, or the soup will taste bitter.
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2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir for 1 minute so it cooks into the fat.
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3. Pour in the hot water a ladle at a time, stirring well after each addition so no lumps form.
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4. Season with salt and pepper, bring to the boil and let it bubble gently for 20 minutes.
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5. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks with the vinegar in a bowl.
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6. Lower the heat so the soup only simmers. Pour in the egg whites in a thin stream while stirring with a fork, so they set into fine white threads.
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7. Whisk a ladle of the hot soup into the yolks to warm them.
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8. Take the pot off the heat and stir in the yolk mixture; the soup turns slightly creamy. Do not let it boil again, or the yolks will curdle.
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9. Put two slices of bread in each warm bowl, ladle the tourin over them and serve at once, very hot.
Notes
- This is the Périgord garlic tourin, blanchi (whitened) with egg. Cooks across the south-west each have their own way, and the soup changes from valley to valley.
- Bordelais (Gironde): tourin blanchi, sometimes nicknamed à l'ivrogne (the drunkard's), eaten through the cold months from October to March.
- Toulouse and the Tarn: the egg white is beaten until frothy and folded into the boiling soup, and the yolk stirred in to thicken; it is served with croutons. Tarn cooks use the pink garlic of Lautrec.
- Some Périgord cooks poach whole eggs in the soup instead, or serve it over bread rubbed with garlic or croutons fried in duck fat. A handful of vermicelli cooked in the broth is an old addition, especially in the wedding tourin.
- Tourin à l'oignon (onion) and tourin à la tomate (tomato) are made the same way with onions or tomatoes taking the lead; the Quercy has forms with goose confit, with browned onion, and with turnip.
- Without duck or goose fat, use lard or butter. Olive oil changes the taste and was not used in old Dordogne kitchens.
- Faire chabrot (lou chabròl): when only a few spoonfuls are left, pour a splash of red wine into the bowl, swirl it and drink straight from the bowl held in both hands.
- Tourin is best made just before eating; once the egg is in, it does not reheat well.
Adapted from FrenchEntrée: Tourain blanchi à l'ail and France This Way: Tourin, garlic soup from south-west France.
At the festivals
Served at 2 festivals in France.
Earlier editions
- September 26, 2026
-
November 15, 2025
🇫🇷 Lanta, France
Soup'Hier
On the menu as Tour in st Anatol ail
By Anne-Marie, Denis et Pauline Latcher
- November 16, 2019
- November 14, 2015