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Old-fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, vegetables, and egg noodles simmered in broth.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,808 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Also mentioned in the method: cheese

Directions

Prepare

  1. Start by preparing your vegetables.

  2. Dice your onions, finely chop your celery and parsley, and thinly slice your carrots and parsnips.

  3. Remove the skin from the chicken breasts and place them in a Dutch oven.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Skim away any foam that appears.

  2. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook chicken thoroughly.

  3. Once chicken is done, remove it from the broth and allow it to cool before cutting. Cut chicken into bite‑sized pieces.

  4. Skim the fat from the broth once the chicken is removed.

Build the soup

  1. Bring your broth back to a boil and add onions, carrots, celery, parsnips, and bouillon cubes. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender.

  2. Once vegetables are tender, add egg noodles and cook until they are done.

  3. Finally, add your bite‑sized pieces of chicken and parsley and allow to simmer enough to heat the meat. Season your soup to taste with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve soup in warm soup bowls with cheese toast.

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 + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Celery + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,805 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

Boneless chicken breasts
Provides the main protein; simmering in broth keeps the meat tender and flavourful.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Egg noodles
Add starch and body, soaking up broth and giving the soup its substance.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour as they soften during simmering.
Parsnips
Add earthy sweetness and body as they become tender in the broth.

The step that matters

Cook the chicken thoroughly, then cool before cutting. Chicken must reach a fully cooked, safe internal temperature throughout. Letting it cool briefly before cutting makes the meat easier to handle and keeps it from drying out as it is portioned.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

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