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Chicken Soup

A simple soup made with chicken stock, carrots, celery, peppercorns, onion, and hot boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the carrots, celery, peppercorns, and onion.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the soup and add the cooked rice.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 of the soup and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long boil.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the broth as it simmers.
Rice
Adds starch and bulk, thickening the soup slightly and making it more filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, rice. 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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