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Chicken Cream Soup

A soup made from boiled chicken, broth, and a cream‑flour mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Cream Soup

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cover the chicken with cold water and add the bay leaf, parsley, and celery.

  2. Boil until the meat drops from the bone, then remove the chicken and strain the broth.

  3. Let the broth cool until the fat rises to the top, then remove it.

  4. Measure the jelly formed; for each pint, use a pint of cream.

Make the cream soup

  1. In a separate dish, boil the cream.

  2. Mix the flour and butter until smooth, then add a pinch of nutmeg and onion juice.

  3. When the cream is boiling, pour it into the chicken jelly and quickly add the flour and butter mixture.

  4. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes, then serve hot.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Its bones and meat release gelatin and flavour into the broth, forming the body of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup with butter, giving it body as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture to the hot cream and jelly. The mixture should be added quickly and stirred in while the liquid is boiling, so the flour disperses evenly and thickens without forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, celery, cream, flour, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, celery, cream, flour, butter, nutmeg. 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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