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It’s called avgolemono, a creamy but tart combination used to thicken sauces and soups, and that gives so many Greek dishes their characteristic tangy richness.

But the avgolemono was a bit fussy for our weeknight standards, so we streamlined it for this recipe in our book “Tuesday Nights Mediterranean,” which features weeknight-friendly meals from the region.

A particularly delicious example is a dish called youvarlakia avgolemono, in which beef and rice meatballs dot a lemony soup that’s rich and velvety with egg yolks.

This lemony Greek meatball soup, a riff on youvarlakia avgolemono, looks especially quiet in the pot.

In the United States, we tend to think of avgolemono as a soup made with chunks of chicken and grains of rice.