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Cream Chicken Soup

A chicken soup thickened with flour, flavored with mushrooms, parsley, paprika, and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, bring chicken stock to a boil.

  2. Add chopped mushrooms and parsley; boil slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Thicken the soup with a little flour.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, slowly stir in the rich cream.

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

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

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying all the other flavors.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and bulk, softening as they simmer in the stock.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with heat and binding the liquid.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream just before serving. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils for long or is added to very hot liquid too quickly. Adding it slowly near the end keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, flour, pepper, 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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