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Cream of Chicken Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled chicken, broth, cream, and a roux of flour and butter.

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

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut up the chicken and cover it with cold water.

  2. Add parsley, bay leaf, celery, and minced onion.

  3. Boil until the meat falls from the bones, then remove the chicken and strain the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Heat 1 pint of jelly and 1 pint of cream in separate vessels.

  2. Rub together the flour and butter until smooth.

  3. Pour the boiling cream into the boiling jelly, gradually adding the butter and flour mixture.

  4. Let boil for 2 to 3 minutes.

  5. Serve very hot with warm wafers.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and blends with the flour to help it thicken smoothly.
Chicken
Provides the main meaty flavor and the broth base.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Adding the mixture gradually while the liquid boils, and stirring it in, keeps it smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, celery, onion, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, onion, cream, flour, butter. 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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