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Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made with a fat hen, bacon, eggs, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine 2 gallons of water and 2 slices of bacon with 1 fat hen.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until the hen is very tender.

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the hen, mince all the white meat, and a small portion of the dark meat.

  2. In a bowl, mix the minced meat with the yolks of 2 hard‑boiled eggs, 1 tablespoon of butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and celery seed to taste.

  3. Return the mixture to the pot, which should have reduced to about 2 quarts.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir everything together and bring to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, add 1 pint of milk and 1 teaspoon of flour mixed into a batter.

  3. Remove from heat immediately to prevent the milk from curdling.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fat hen
Provides the main meat and flavor of the broth as it simmers tender.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the minced meat mixture with richness and a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the finished soup.
Flour
Mixed into a batter, it lightly thickens the soup as the milk is added.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the minced meat mixture.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately after adding the milk. Milk proteins can curdle when held at a hard boil, leaving the soup grainy. Taking it off the heat as soon as it boils keeps the milk smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, milk, flour. 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.

More chicken soup recipes

White 9Almond 8Creamy 7Friar's 6Plain 5with Dumplings 3 See all 163 →

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