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Rice Soup with a Chicken

A simple soup of rice cooked in chicken stock with a whole chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Soup with a Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the rice and place it in a small soup pot.

  2. Add the chicken stock and the chicken with its legs drawn in.

Cook the rice

  1. Simmer very slowly, watching closely as the rice absorbs the stock.

  2. When nearly dry, fill the pot with more stock and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the surface and let it boil gently until the chicken is tender and the bones pull out easily.

  2. Serve in a tureen.

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. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the stock and softens, thickening the soup and giving it a starchy body.
Chicken stock
Provides the main liquid and the savoury base flavour of the soup.
Chicken
Flavours the stock as it cooks, and its bones release collagen that adds body.

The step that matters

Watching the rice as it absorbs the stock. Rice keeps soaking up liquid as it simmers. If it is left unattended, it can stick and scorch on the bottom of the pot or overcook into a mushy texture. Simmering slowly gives the grains time to absorb the stock evenly.

“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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