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Soup a LA Reine

A chicken soup with rice, mace, and white stock, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice 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 ↓

Soup a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all the meat from the roast chicken and pass it through a mincing machine.

  2. Add the boiled rice, salt, pepper, and mace to the minced meat.

Simmer and serve

  1. Put the mixture in a saucepan with the white stock.

  2. Let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve 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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  2. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Roast chicken
Provides the minced meat that gives the soup its body and savoury flavour.
Boiled rice
Adds body and thickness as it softens in the simmering stock.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavours.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 minutes. A gentle simmer lets the flavours blend and the rice soften without the liquid boiling hard, which could cloud the soup and break up the solids before straining.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, pepper):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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