Why it works: Flour and wild rice share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 56 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Make the soup base
Melt butter in large saucepan or Dutch oven.
Cook onions and carrots until tender-crisp.
Blend in flour.
Gradually stir in broth.
Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil.
Boil, stirring, 1 minute.
Add rice and finish
Stir in brown rice, wild rice, ham, pepper, and thyme.
Simmer, uncovered, about 5 minutes.
Stir in half-and-half and sherry.
Garnish each serving with almonds.
This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.
Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Flour + wild ricetop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together56 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chicken + ricetop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together4,569 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Onion + chickentop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together17,808 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together21,599 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Carrot + ricetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together2,351 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter or margarine
- Adds fat and richness, and helps cook the vegetables gently in the base.
- All-purpose flour
- Thickens the broth into a smooth, creamy soup body.
- Chicken broth
- Forms the liquid base of the soup.
- Brown rice
- Adds chewy texture and body to the soup.
- Wild rice
- Adds chewy texture and a nutty flavor to the soup.
- Half and half
- Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture at the end.
The step that matters
Adding the flour to the butter and broth. Flour must be cooked briefly in the fat and then stirred into broth gradually and constantly; adding liquid too fast or not stirring lets lumps form and leaves a raw floury taste, so the soup will not thicken smoothly.
Flavor stand-ins for the carrot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, flour, chicken, rice, wild rice, ham):
- Potatobetter flavor fit
- Welsh onionabout as good a flavor fit
- Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit
- Carrotthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, chicken, rice, wild rice, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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