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Chicken Soup

Chicken soup with celery, milk, egg, and flour dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine chopped celery and chicken broth.

  2. Make dumplings by mixing milk, half an egg, salt, and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Drop the dumplings into the boiling soup.

  4. Cook until the dumplings and celery are tender.

  5. Remove the dumplings.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the broth with flour mixed with cold water.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve hot in a tureen.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the dish.
Flour
Sets the stiff dumpling dough and thickens the broth when mixed with cold water.
Milk
Moistens the dumpling dough so it holds together while it cooks.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dumpling dough.

The step that matters

Drop the dumplings into the boiling soup. The dumplings need to be placed into gently boiling liquid so their outsides set quickly and they hold their shape rather than dissolving into the broth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, egg, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, egg, flour. 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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