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Thick Chicken and Vegetable Soup

A thick soup made with chicken, broth, root vegetables, cumin, bay leaves, cilantro, onions, and milk.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,756 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

The recipe

Timeabout 30 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, bring the chicken, chicken broth, salt, pepper, cumin, and bay leaves to a boil.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the chicken is well done.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients, except for the milk, and return to a boil, then cover the pot and reduce the heat.

  4. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked.

Finish with milk

  1. Slowly stir in the milk.

  2. Simmer for an additional 3 minutes, stirring gently.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

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.

  1. Chicken + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cumin + carrottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together776 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Potato + oniontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,105 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken meat
Provides protein and savory body to the broth as it cooks through.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup when stirred in near the end.
Potatoes
Break down partly during simmering, adding body and thickening the broth slightly.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds as they cook, building flavor in the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk can curdle or scorch if it boils hard or is added too quickly to very hot liquid. Stirring it in slowly and simmering gently keeps it smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, pepper, cumin, carrot, potato, onion):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, pepper, cumin, carrot, potato, onion. 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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