Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made from a whole chicken, rice, vegetables, milk, and butter, simmered for an hour.

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

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut up the chicken and break the bones.

  2. Cook in 3 quarts of water until very tender, adding water as it boils away.

  3. Remove the meat and bones from the kettle.

  4. Pour the soup into an earthen dish and let it cool.

  5. Remove all fat from the stock and pour it back into a saucepan.

Make the soup

  1. Add the washed rice to the soup.

  2. In a little butter, fry the chopped onion, celery, turnip, and carrot, then add to the soup.

  3. Boil slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Chop the chicken breast very fine and add it to the soup.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Put the soup back on the fire, add the milk, butter, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Boil once and serve.

  3. Optionally flavor with parsley or thyme.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and bones that flavour the stock and the finely chopped meat in the soup.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens during the long simmer.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the broth's flavour and colour.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour, both for frying the vegetables and finishing the soup.
Onion
Builds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens in butter before simmering.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked solids through a sieve breaks them into a smooth, fine texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and uneven.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, onion, celery, carrot, milk, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, onion, celery, carrot, milk, butter. 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.

More chicken soup recipes

White 9Almond 8Creamy 7Friar's 6Plain 5with Dumplings 3 See all 163 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes