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Chicken Vegetable Soup

A soup made with a fat hen, potatoes, onion, parsley, celery seed, red pepper, salt, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery 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 ↓

Chicken Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cover the hen with water and boil for two hours.

  2. Remove the hen from the pot.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes, chopped onion, parsley, celery seed, red pepper, and salt.

  4. Cook until the vegetables are thoroughly done.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the sweet milk.

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 + celerytop 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

Fat hen
Provides the meat and rich broth that forms the base of the soup.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook, thickening the broth slightly and adding body.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the broth.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and mild richness when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk just before serving. Milk can curdle or separate if it boils for a long time or is added to very hot liquid too early. Adding it at the end keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, celery, pepper, milk. 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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