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Chicken Soup

A soup made with boiled chicken fat, rice, salted milk, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, salt, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

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 ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the boiled chicken fat in a pot.

  2. Boil the rice in salted milk until tender.

  3. Stir in the butter and flour mixture to prevent oil separation.

  4. Once the soup boils, skim it and add the rice and milk.

  5. Add minced parsley, pepper, and salt to taste, then simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely and place them in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the chopped eggs.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens in the milk and thickens the soup body as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the soup base.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the soup and help keep the fat from separating.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add substance and body as chopped pieces in the tureen.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed with butter must be blended in smoothly so it thickens evenly without lumps or separated fat. Adding it to a boiling liquid without stirring can cause clumping, so it should be incorporated gently and thoroughly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, milk, butter, flour, pepper, 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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White 9Almond 8Creamy 7Friar's 6Plain 5with Dumplings 3 See all 163 →

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