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Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, ham, eggs, bread crumbs, 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 parsley 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

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the chickens into pieces and place them in a pot with the ham or pork and enough water to cover them.

  2. Stew for 1 hour or until the chicken is tender.

  3. Remove the chicken breasts and leave the rest of the meat in the pot.

  4. Add the remaining boiling hot water to the pot.

  5. Stir the soup slowly.

  6. After 2.5 hours of boiling, strain the soup to remove meat and bones.

Make the force-meat balls

  1. Chop the chicken breasts.

  2. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs smooth.

  3. Add a few spoonfuls of soup to the yolks to make a paste.

  4. Mix the egg paste with the bread crumbs and chopped chicken to form small balls.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the soup with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  2. Drop the balls of force-meat into the soup.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Gradually add the milk thickened with a little flour.

  5. Boil once.

  6. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat and flavor that give the soup its body.
Pickled ham or pork
Adds savory, salty flavor to the broth.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks bind with bread crumbs and chicken to hold the force-meat balls together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the force-meat balls hold their shape.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, thickened with flour to soften the broth.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk thickened with a little flour. Adding cold or unthickened milk all at once can curdle or separate. Flour mixed in first and milk added slowly, with the soup kept below a hard boil, helps keep the broth smooth and creamy.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, egg, bread, 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.

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