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Soup

Chicken or Veal Soup

A light broth soup with eggs, flour, milk, and optional celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery 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 ↓

Chicken or Veal Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, flour, and milk.

  2. Bring the chicken or veal broth to a boil.

Cook and finish

  1. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling broth and cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and add celery if desired.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Set into soft ribbons in the hot broth, giving the soup body and a light texture.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly so the soup feels fuller in the mouth.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the egg and flour mixture before it meets the hot broth.
Chicken or veal broth
Forms the savory base that carries all the other flavors.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling broth. Eggs can scramble into lumps if added to liquid that is too cold or left to boil too hard. Keeping the broth at a steady simmer while stirring in the mixture helps it set into fine, even strands.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, 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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