Name: Chicken Soup
Ingredients: 1 chicken, cut up; 3 quarts water; 2 tablespoons rice; 1 sprig parsley; 1 sprig thyme; Salt and pepper to taste; 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine; 1 tablespoon butter (optional, if chicken is not fat)

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the cut-up chicken in 3 quarts of water until the strength is extracted.
Add 2 tablespoons of rice, parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper to taste.
Before serving, stir in the chopped hard-boiled eggs and butter if the chicken is not fat.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

Chicken: Releases flavor and body into the water as it simmers, forming the soup base.
Rice: Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during cooking.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and body to the soup when stirred in at the end.

Swap the thyme

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

Thymethe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, parsley, pepper, egg, butter. 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.