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Chicken Soup

A savory soup made with chicken, water, sliced middling, cream, butter, flour, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place the chicken and water in a pot over low heat to simmer.

  2. Add the chopped slice of middling.

  3. Simmer for several hours, then bring to a boil about 30 minutes before serving.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the cream, butter, and flour to create a thickening agent.

  2. Add the thickening to the soup before it boils and remove the thyme before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,173 recipes

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

  4. Flour + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Chicken
Gives the soup its main body and rich meaty flavour as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture so the soup becomes less watery.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the thickening.

The step that matters

Add the thickening before it boils. Flour thickens best when whisked into hot liquid gradually and not allowed to boil hard afterward. Adding the cream and flour mixture before boiling helps it blend smoothly and avoids lumps and a grainy, separated texture.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, butter, 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.

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