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Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made with roasted chicken, water, onion, celery, broth, butter, flour, curry powder, salt, cayenne, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the roasted chicken and water in a soup kettle. Set over low heat and skim off any scum.

  2. Add the chopped onion and celery, then simmer for about 3 hours.

  3. Remove the chicken and vegetables, strain the broth, and set aside.

Brown the chicken and thicken

  1. In a pan, melt the butter, dredge the chicken meat in flour, and fry until golden brown.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of the chicken broth with curry powder, flour, butter, salt, and cayenne until smooth.

  3. Combine the mixture with the broth in the pot and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Add the browned chicken and serve with rice.

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

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

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the broth and coats the chicken so it browns evenly.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the pan and helps the flour coat and brown the chicken.
Curry powder
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the broth.
Chicken broth
Provides the liquid base that the thickened mixture is blended into.

The step that matters

Dredging and frying the chicken in flour. Flour needs enough heat and fat to brown without clumping or scorching. Cooking until golden gives browning flavour, while a pale or burnt coating spoils the soup's taste and texture.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, butter, flour, pepper, rice):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, flour, pepper, rice. 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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