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Chicken Soup

A soup made from stewed chicken bones, meat shreds, and gravy, seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Save the bones, meat shreds, and gravy from stewed chicken.

  2. If baked, include bits of dressing for flavor.

  3. Crack the large bones and cover with cold water in a pot.

Simmer and season

  1. Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, sage, and butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, remove the bones and strain the soup.

  2. Add 1 pint of rich milk and a little thickening if desired.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water as they simmer, giving the broth body.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and a mellow sweetness that softens the broth's savory notes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones without clouding the broth. A hard boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the soup cloudy and greasy.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, pepper, butter, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, pepper, butter, milk. 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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