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Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, ham, chicken, herbs, carrots, onions, mace, peppercorns, and thickened with bread, cream, and arrow-root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine veal, ham, water, herbs, carrots, onions, mace, peppercorns, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 5 hours.

  3. Add the chickens and cook for 1 to 1½ hours until tender.

  4. Strain the stock and let it cool.

  5. Skim off any fat.

Make the soup

  1. Steep the bread in a small portion of boiling stock for a few minutes, then drain it.

  2. Pound the bread with the chicken until well blended.

  3. Gradually mix in the stock until smooth.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a clean pot.

  5. Heat the mixture and stir in the boiling cream.

  6. If the soup is not thick enough, mix arrow-root with cold milk or stock and add it to the soup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  4. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 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

Veal
Builds a rich, gelatinous body into the long-simmered stock.
Chickens
Add meat and flavor to the stock, and are pounded into the soup for body.
Bread
Thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, velvety texture when pounded.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Arrow-root
Thickens the soup further if it is not thick enough after blending.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling cream. Stirring cream into a very hot mixture is fine, but the soup should be heated gently afterward so the cream does not split or curdle at a hard boil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, onion, chicken, bread, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, onion, chicken, bread, cream. 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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