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Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken carcass, veal, bacon, vegetables, and a creamy thickening mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove all meat from the cold roast fowl, leaving only the wings and carcass.

  2. Break the bones and place them in a soup kettle with 2 quarts of cold water and the cleaned neck and wings.

  3. Dust the diced veal with flour and pepper, then brown it in 2 tablespoons of chopped bacon.

  4. Add 1 cup of hot water to the browned veal, simmer for a few minutes, then pour into the soup kettle.

  5. Cook slowly for 1 hour, then add the bay leaf, onion slice, and celery stalk; cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup and cool it, then remove the fat and reduce the stock by one-fourth.

Make the thickened soup

  1. In a saucepan, mix 2 tablespoons corn starch, 1½ teaspoons salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, 1 tablespoon flour, and 2 tablespoons butter.

  2. Gradually add 1 pint of hot stock and cook until thickened, then add 1½ cups of hot stock and mix well.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks diluted with 1 cup of cream, keeping the mixture hot but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in bouillon cups, optionally topped with a spoonful of whipped cream.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they set gently in the hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the finished soup.
Corn starch
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied base when heated.
Flour
Helps thicken the butter-based base and browns the veal lightly.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the roux-style base that thickens the soup.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor when used to brown the veal.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the soup grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, pepper, celery, corn, butter, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, pepper, celery, corn, butter, egg. 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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