Name: Chicken Soup
Ingredients: 1 chicken, cut up; 1 ¾ quarts water; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon salt; 2 tablespoons barley or rice; 1 cup cream

Why it works: Chicken and barley work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 265 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Place the cut-up chicken in a kettle with nearly 1 ¾ quarts of water, pepper, and salt.
Cook until the chicken is about half done.
Add the barley or rice and continue cooking until done.

Finish and serve

Remove the chicken from the soup, cut part of the breast into small pieces, and return to the soup.
Stir in the cream before serving.

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.

Chicken + barleytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pepper + barleytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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: Provides the main protein and flavor that the broth carries.
Barley or rice: Thickens the broth slightly as its starch softens during cooking.
Cream: Adds richness and a smoother, fuller mouthfeel to the finished soup.

“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.