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Chicken or Veal Soup

A broth-based soup made with chicken or veal stock, eggs, flour, milk, and optional celery, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Make the egg mixture

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

Cook the soup

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

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling broth and let it boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and add celery if desired before serving.

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
Coagulate in the hot broth, forming soft, tender threads that thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth and gives the soup a smoother, more body-filled texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the flavor of the broth.
Chicken or veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling broth. Adding the egg mixture to boiling liquid can cause it to scramble into lumps if not stirred steadily. Constant stirring disperses the egg evenly, so it sets into fine strands rather than clumps.

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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