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Chicken Soup

A hearty chicken soup with rice, turnips, potatoes, onion, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Turnip and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 367 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Clean and wash the chicken, then place it in a large pot with 4 quarts of water.

  2. Add the rice, onion, turnips, sugar, marjoram, salt, and red pepper.

  3. Boil over low heat for just over an hour.

  4. Add the quartered potatoes and cook until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the minced parsley before serving.

  2. Place the chicken on a dish garnished with parsley sprigs and serve the soup hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavor base as it simmers into the broth.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Potatoes
Add body and starch, softening into the broth as they cook.
Turnips
Contribute mild bitterness and texture that softens during long simmering.
Onion
Builds savory depth as its sugars and aromatics mellow in the broth.

The step that matters

Boil over low heat for just over an hour. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the chicken become tender without breaking apart. A hard, rapid boil can make the broth cloudy and toughen the meat.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, onion, sugar, marjoram, pepper, potato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, onion, sugar, marjoram, pepper, potato. 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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