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 and cook
Blanch the rice.
Put the rice into a stewpan with the chickens and stock.
Set the stewpan on the stove to boil very slowly until the chickens and rice are tender.
Finish the soup
Add enough stock to fill the tureen.
Skim the fat from the soup.
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.
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Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Thickens the soup as its starch softens during the slow simmer.
- Chickens
- Release flavour and gelatin into the stock, giving the soup body and savour.
- Stock
- Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and cooks the rice and chicken.
The step that matters
Simmer very slowly until tender. A slow simmer keeps the chicken and rice tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens the meat and breaks up the rice, leaving a cloudy soup.
“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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