Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Bisque

A creamy chicken soup thickened with egg and flour, finished with a touch of cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Bisque

Why it works: Lettuce and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,236 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Simmer the chicken in water for five hours, skimming frequently.

  2. Add the lettuce leaves, cover the pot, and let it stand off the heat for twenty minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth or fine sieve.

Finish the bisque

  1. For each half pint of broth, beat the egg and stir in the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the broth to the egg mixture until it thickens.

  3. Just before serving, add ½ teaspoon of slightly beaten cream to each cup.

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. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the broth its body and savory flavor as it simmers for hours.
Egg
Thickens the broth and adds richness when beaten and combined with it.
Flour
Helps thicken the egg mixture so the bisque becomes smooth and body-rich.
Cream
Adds fat and a softer, rounder texture to the finished bisque.

The step that matters

Adding the broth to the egg mixture. If the broth is poured in too quickly or is too hot, the egg can scramble instead of thickening the bisque smoothly. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps the egg proteins evenly dispersed.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, flour, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes