Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Soup

A simple chicken soup with rice, herbs, onions, celery, parsley, and optional allspice, noodles or dumplings, served with drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Soup

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash the chicken and place it in a pot. Cover with water and add salt.

  2. Pick and wash the rice, then add it to the pot along with the sweet herbs, onions, and celery as soon as the water begins to boil.

  3. Once the chicken is tender, add the minced parsley and let it boil for a few more minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt to taste, then serve the chicken with drawn butter.

  2. If desired, add allspice, noodles, or dumplings instead of rice.

  3. For dumplings, mix 1 teaspoon butter, 2 teaspoons flour, and enough water to form a soft dough. Drop teaspoonfuls into the boiling soup and cook for a few minutes.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and flavourful broth as it simmers in water.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat to the chicken when served.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, onion, celery, parsley, pepper, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, onion, celery, parsley, pepper, 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.

More chicken soup recipes

White 9Almond 8Creamy 7Friar's 6Plain 5with Dumplings 3 See all 163 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes