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Economical Chicken Soup

A broth made from boiled fowl, vegetables, and rice, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Economical Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine all ingredients except rice in a saucepan with the liquor from the boiled fowl.

  2. Simmer gently for 8 hours, skimming occasionally.

  3. Half an hour before serving, strain through a napkin.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the washed and strained rice, bring to a boil, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Liquor from boiled fowl
Provides the rich base liquid that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Remains of fowl
Releases flavour and body into the broth during long, gentle simmering.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly and adds starchy body as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering gently and skimming. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, while a hard boil would cloud it and emulsify fat into it. Skimming removes foam and excess fat, leaving a cleaner-tasting soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, rice, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, rice, 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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