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Imperial Soup

A creamy chicken soup with almonds, cream, and stock, simmered with celery, carrot, onion, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 17 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 ↓

Imperial Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavour base

  1. Cook celery, carrot, and onion in one tablespoon butter for five minutes.

  2. Tie the mixture in a cheese-cloth with parsley, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and mace.

Simmer the stock

  1. Add the cloth-wrapped mixture to the stock with salt and bread crumbs.

  2. Simmer for one hour.

  3. Remove the seasonings.

  4. Rub the soup through a sieve.

Add the chicken and almonds

  1. Chop the chicken meat and rub it through the sieve.

  2. Pound the almonds to a paste.

  3. Add the almond paste to the chicken.

  4. Add the cream.

  5. Combine the mixtures.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the milk.

  2. Reheat the soup.

  3. Bind with the remaining butter and flour cooked together.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1014Calories
55 gProtein
31 gFat
127 gCarbs

Counts 13 of 14 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 13 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chicken100g cooked165
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Almond1 almond (1.2g)7
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches flavour and, cooked with flour, forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a binding roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the finished soup.
Blanched almonds
Ground to a paste, they add body and a mild nutty richness.
Stale bread crumbs
Help thicken the stock and give the soup a fuller body.
Boiled chicken
Adds savoury meat flavour and substance once pureed into the soup.

The step that matters

Binding with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked with butter into a roux before it goes in, otherwise it stays raw and pasty and clumps instead of thickening the soup smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, celery, carrot, onion, butter, parsley, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, celery, carrot, onion, butter, parsley, clove. 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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