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Chicken Soup

A soup made with chicken, onion, celery, turnip, rice, egg yolks, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Celery and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Clean the fowl.

  2. Place the fowl in a pot over low heat.

  3. Add the sliced onion, celery, turnip and water.

Cook the soup

  1. When the fowl is nearly done, add the rice.

  2. Once the rice is cooked, remove the vegetables.

  3. Remove the chicken.

  4. Cut the breast from the fowl.

  5. Pound the breast.

  6. Return the breast to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with cream.

  2. Add the mixture to the soup when not boiling.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve.

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and flavour that make up the body of the broth.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and softens during cooking.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when added off the boil.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. If the soup is boiling when the yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding them off the boil lets them thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, turnip, rice, egg, cream, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, rice, egg, cream, pepper. 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.

More chicken soup recipes

White 9Almond 8Creamy 7Friar's 6Plain 5with Dumplings 3 See all 163 →

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