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Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made from a whole chicken, rice, vegetables, milk, and butter, simmered and strained.

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

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut up the chicken and break the bones.

  2. Cook the chicken in 3 quarts of water until very tender, adding water as it boils away.

  3. Remove the meat and bones from the kettle.

  4. Pour the soup into an earthen dish and let it cool.

  5. Remove all fat from the stock and pour it back into a saucepan.

Add the vegetables and rice

  1. Add the washed rice to the soup.

  2. In a little butter, fry the onion, celery, turnip, and carrot, then add to the soup and boil slowly for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the chicken breast finely, add it to the soup, and strain through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the soup to the heat, add the milk, butter, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil once and serve.

  4. Optionally, flavor with parsley or thyme.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Gives the stock its main meaty flavor and body, and provides the protein-rich meat in the soup.
Rice
Swells as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it a fuller texture.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy softness to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and rounds out the richness of the soup.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during frying, building a savory aromatic base for the stock.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma as it softens in the simmering soup.

The step that matters

Boil once and serve, after adding the milk. Milk can curdle or scorch if it boils hard or repeatedly, so the soup should be brought up to heat only once and served promptly to keep it smooth.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, onion, celery, carrot, milk, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, onion, celery, carrot, milk, 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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