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Soup

Cream of Chicken

A creamy soup made with boiled chicken, rice, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Cream of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the boiled chicken in a mortar.

  2. Put the chicken in a saucepan and moisten with white broth.

Cook and strain

  1. Add raw rice, bouquet of herbs, coarse sea salt, whole peppercorns, and cloves.

  2. Boil thoroughly for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in cream and serve with cooked chicken pieces or croutons souffles.

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

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

  2. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Chicken + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled chicken
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the soup once pounded and simmered into the broth.
White broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and gives the soup its volume.
Raw rice
Breaks down during boiling and thickens the soup, giving it a smoother body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine sieve. Straining after the long boil removes rice, herb and spice debris and chicken fibres, so the soup becomes smooth rather than grainy. Pressing the solids gently extracts more flavour and body.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, 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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