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Chicken Soup, Made in Two Hours and Ten Minutes

A hearty chicken soup made with whole chickens, carrots, onions, tomatoes, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Soup, Made in Two Hours and Ten Minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If the chickens are needed whole, stuff, truss, and sew them in thin cotton cloth.

  2. Place the chickens in a kettle with the cold water, onion, and carrots.

Simmer

  1. Boil slowly, covered, for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the chickens.

Season and finish

  1. Add the tomatoes, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil the soup for an additional 10 minutes before serving.

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.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chickens
Provide the main meat and the flavor that builds the broth as they simmer.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and brightness that balance the rich chicken flavor.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, covered. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer prevents rolling boil, which emulsifies fat into the broth and makes it cloudy. A covered gentle simmer keeps the broth clearer and the chicken tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, pepper, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, pepper, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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