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Cream Chicken Soup

A soup made from chicken scraps, water, celery, onion, milk, butter, flour, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Simmer the chicken scraps, water, celery, and onion slowly until reduced to about 1 quart.

  2. Strain out the bones.

Make the thickened mixture

  1. Melt the butter, then stir it into the flour and add the milk.

  2. Boil the mixture until thick.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the thickened mixture to the chicken broth just before serving.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, thick base for the soup.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the thickened base.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup when thickened with flour.
Chicken scraps and bones
Release flavor and gelatin into the water as they simmer into broth.

The step that matters

Boil the flour and milk mixture until thick. Flour thickens only when its starch granules swell in hot liquid. Stopping too early leaves a thin, starchy-tasting soup, while the thickened base must be added to the broth so it blends smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, onion, milk, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, onion, milk, 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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