Skip to main content
Main

Rice Soup, Indian Style

A chicken and rice soup flavored with curry and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Soup, Indian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Prepare 4 quarts of thickened chicken broth and set it to boil slowly for 30 minutes, skimming well.

  2. Strain the thickened chicken broth through a fine sieve into the saucepan.

Cook the chicken and curry

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and lightly fry the chicken pieces.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of curry powder diluted with 1 quart of broth and cook slowly until the chicken is three-quarters done.

  3. Add the faggot of parsley, celery, and leek. Season to taste and let the soup boil slowly until the chicken is fully cooked.

  4. Skim off the grease and remove the faggot.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in ½ pint of cream mixed with 4 egg yolks.

  2. Serve with plain boiled rice.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  5. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and meaty body of the soup as it simmers in the broth.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into the soup and add richness when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Fat used to fry the chicken, adding browning and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream and egg yolks into the soup. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is boiling when they go in. Adding the cream-yolk mixture before serving, with the soup hot but not boiling, lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, celery, leek, cream, egg, rice):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, celery, leek, cream, egg, rice. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes