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Plain Chicken Soup

A clear soup made from simmered chicken, rice, parsley, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut up the chicken and break all the bones.

  2. Place the chicken in a large pot with cold water and let it simmer for 5 hours, skimming regularly.

  3. In the last hour, add the rice and parsley to the pot.

  4. After cooking, let the pot sit for a few moments, then skim off any fat with a spoon.

Strain and finish

  1. Pour the soup through a sieve into a deep dish, removing bones, meat pieces, and parsley.

  2. Press the rice through the sieve and mix it with the soup until smooth.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down when pressed through the sieve, thickening the soup and giving it a smooth body.
Whole chicken
Releases collagen and flavour into the water during long simmering, forming the body of the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming during the simmer. Fat and foam rise to the surface during the long simmer. Removing them regularly keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting greasy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Corianderfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, 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.

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