Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
Chicken Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Select a chicken that is a year or two old.
Place the chicken in a large pot and cover it with 3 quarts of boiling water.
Simmer and season
Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 1 hour.
Season with coarse sea salt to taste.
Add starchy food and green vegetables if desired for extra flavor and nutrition.
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.
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Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,769 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Whole chicken
- Provides the meat and the body that gives the broth its flavor.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavor and gelatin from the chicken as it simmers slowly.
The step that matters
Simmer gently after the boil. Once the pot reaches a boil, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and prevents the meat from toughening. A hard boil makes the broth cloudy and the chicken dry and stringy.
“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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