Name: Chicken Soup, Made in Two Hours and Ten Minutes
Ingredients: 2 whole chickens; 14 ounces chopped carrots; 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons pepper; 1 can of tomatoes; 1 sliced onion; 4 quarts cold water

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 and simmer

If using whole chickens for serving, stuff, truss, and sew them in thin cotton cloth.
Place the chickens in a kettle with cold water, onion, and carrots.
Boil slowly, covered, for 2 hours.

Season and serve

Remove the chickens, add tomatoes, pepper, and salt to the soup.
Boil 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.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

Chickens: Release meat, collagen and fat that give the broth its body and savory flavor.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and a mellow aroma to the broth.
Onion: Adds savory aroma that deepens the flavor of the broth.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and a rounded tomato flavor to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, covered, for 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the chicken become tender. A hard, rapid boil churns fat and particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and toughening the meat.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Spinachfits about as well
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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Chicken Soup, Made in Two Hours and Ten Minutes