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Plain Chicken Soup

A clear soup made from simmered chicken, rice, onion, celery, parsley, and optional cream or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the fowl pieces in a saucepan with 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Add the onion, celery, parsley, and rice, and simmer for another hour.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Let it sit until the grease rises to the top.

  6. Remove the meat, bones, and vegetables from the strainer.

Finish the soup

  1. Press the rice through a sieve.

  2. Stir the rice into the soup.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Heat again before serving.

  5. If you want a thicker soup, mix 2 tablespoons of cold stock with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.

  6. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  7. Cook for 10 minutes.

  8. Add diced pieces of chicken breast and a little cream before serving.

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 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

Fowl
Simmered for hours to release flavor and gelatin into the broth.
Rice
Pressed through a sieve, it thickens the broth and gives it body.
Cornstarch
Optional thickener that gels when heated with liquid, making the soup silkier.

The step that matters

Let the grease rise before continuing. Fat floats on hot broth and can make the soup greasy. Letting it sit and then removing the layer before adding thickeners keeps the texture clean and light.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, celery, parsley, pepper, cream):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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