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Soup

Cream Chicken Soup

A creamy soup made with chicken stock, mushrooms, parsley, and cream, seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, bring the chicken stock to a boil.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms and parsley, and boil for 15 minutes over low heat.

  3. Thicken the soup with a little flour, then season with salt, pepper, and paprika.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, slowly stir in the rich 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.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and gives the soup its body.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and soft, tender pieces to the soup.
Rich cream
Adds fat for a smooth, silky texture and a mellow richness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream just before serving. Cream is rich in fat and proteins that can curdle or separate when heated hard or added too quickly. Stirring it in slowly at the end, with the soup no longer boiling, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mushroom, pepper, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, pepper, cream. 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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