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A Delicate Chicken Soup

A soup made from young chickens, white stock, turnip, carrot, bread crumbs, cream, and optional arrowroot thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Delicate Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the chicken

  1. Place the chickens in a stew-pan with the white stock, turnip, and carrot.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the white flesh from the chickens.

  4. Return the rest of the chicken to the soup.

  5. Simmer for an additional 2 hours.

Make the paste

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in a little boiling liquid.

  2. Drain the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Combine the soaked crumbs with the removed chicken flesh in a mortar.

  4. Pound the mixture to a smooth paste, gradually adding more liquid.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of pounded mace.

  6. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Bring the soup to a boil.

  2. Stir in the boiling cream.

  3. If the soup is not thick enough, mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk.

  4. Add the arrowroot mixture smoothly to the soup.

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.

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. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main body of flavour and the meat that is pounded into the soup.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and help thicken the soup when pounded into a smooth paste.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smooth, mellow texture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup when mixed with cold milk and stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot mixture. Arrowroot must be mixed into cold milk first so it does not clump, then stirred in smoothly. Added directly to hot liquid, it forms lumps and the soup will not thicken evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, turnip, carrot, bread, cream, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, turnip, carrot, bread, cream, milk, 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.

More chicken soup recipes

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

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