🇮🇹 Italy · Pavia (Lombardy)
Zuppa pavesePavia egg and bread soup
A Lombard soup of hot meat broth poured over slices of bread fried in butter with an egg, finished with grated cheese.
Origin and history
According to tradition, the soup goes back to the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525, when a peasant woman served a simple meal of broth, bread, egg and cheese to the captured King Francis I of France. The historian Alberto Arecchi disputes this, saying the soup was prepared in the kitchens of the French court, so the story remains a legend; it is a Lombard bread-and-egg soup of peasant origin made from a few cheap ingredients.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 20 min
- Hands-on
- 15 min
Ingredients
- 1 liter4 cups clear meat broth (brodo di carne), homemade if possible, boiling hot
- 8 slices of country bread, about 1 cm (1/2 in) thick, a day old
- 50 g3 1/2 tbsp butter, for frying the bread
- 4 very fresh eggs
- 60 g1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano, plus more at the table
- salt, to taste
Method
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1. Keep the broth at a rolling boil in a pot.
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2. Melt the butter in a large pan and fry the bread slices over medium heat until golden on both sides, in batches.
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3. Place two slices of fried bread in each of four wide, deep soup plates.
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4. Crack one egg over each pair of slices without breaking the yolk, and sprinkle generously with grated cheese.
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5. Pour the boiling broth slowly down the side of each plate, over the bread but not over the yolks, until the whites just begin to set and the yolk stays soft.
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6. Taste, add a little salt only if needed (the broth and cheese are salty), and serve at once with extra cheese.
Notes
- The egg goes in whole, not beaten into the broth; that is what separates zuppa pavese from stracciatella. Ciao Italia sets the bowls in a 175 C (350 F) oven for 7 to 8 minutes to poach the egg more firmly and tops them with parsley; the other recipes read keep the yolk runny so it blends into the broth.
- Quantities follow the Fantasie in forno recipe for four (1 litre of broth, 8 slices of stale bread, 4 eggs, butter and Parmesan); it toasts the bread and butters it, while the method here fries the slices in butter as the Lombardy tourism page and Memorie di Angelina describe. Grana Padano can stand in for the Parmesan.
- Use a clear, well-made broth: with so few ingredients the broth is the flavour of the dish. Beef-boiling broth is the usual choice, and the eggs should be as fresh as you can get.
Adapted from Ciao Italia, Zuppa Pavese (Pavia's Poached Egg Soup), In Lombardia (Lombardy tourism), Zuppa pavese recipe, Fantasie in forno, Zuppa pavese, and Memorie di Angelina, Zuppa pavese.
At the festivals
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