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Fowl or Chicken Soup

A clear soup made with veal stock, chicken, vegetables, herbs, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fowl or Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 2 quarts of veal stock.

  2. Add chopped carrot, onion, celery, parsley, and sweet herbs to the stock.

  3. Cut the fowl or chicken into four pieces and add to the stock.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil or simmer gently until the chicken is tender.

  2. Strain the soup and add beaten egg yolks, pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Cut the best meat from the fowl into neat pieces and add to the soup.

  4. Warm the soup well and 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.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Fowl or chicken
Supplies the meat and body of flavour as it simmers in the stock.
Egg yolks
Thicken the strained soup slightly and add richness when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the soup is too hot when they are added, they can scramble and leave a grainy texture. Stir them in gently off the boil and warm the soup only until it thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, celery, parsley, chicken, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, celery, parsley, chicken, egg, 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.

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