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Economical Chicken Soup

A simple chicken soup made with boiled fowl liquor, bones, vegetables, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Economical Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine all ingredients except the rice in a saucepan with the liquor from the boiled fowl.

  2. Simmer gently on the side of the stove for 8 hours, skimming occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, strain the mixture through a napkin.

  2. Add the washed and strained rice, bring slowly to a boil, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Fowl remains and bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the broth during long, gentle simmering.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during the final boil.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and flavours the stock.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks down.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and earthy depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, while a hard boil would emulsify fat and cloud it. Skimming removes impurities and excess fat that would otherwise spoil the flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, rice, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, 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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