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Cream of Chicken Soup

A creamy soup made with chicken stock, vegetables, eggs, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Cream of Chicken Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cream of Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Brown the carrot and onion in butter.

  2. Add the chicken stock, celery, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  3. Heat slowly to boiling point and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the scalded milk.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream.

  2. Allow the mixture to thicken without boiling, then add the hot boiled rice and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve in a tureen or individual cups, garnished with poached egg whites.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a smooth, creamy body when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the chicken stock base.
Chicken stock
Forms the savoury liquid base of the soup.
Onion
Browning in butter adds sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Carrot
Browning in butter adds sweetness and colour to the base.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to thicken without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, so the soup must stay below boiling once they are stirred in. Gentle heat lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, celery, milk, egg, cream, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, celery, milk, egg, cream, pepper. 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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