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For Cold Chicken

A cold chicken soup made with chicken, vegetables, stock, mushrooms, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

For Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the cold chicken bones and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the chicken bones and 1 pint of good white stock.

  3. Add the sliced carrot, quartered onion, and washed celery to the stewpan.

  4. Include the bouquet garni, clove, peppercorns, and mace.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain the stock into a basin.

Cook the mushrooms

  1. In a separate stewpan, melt a piece of butter the size of a chestnut.

  2. Add the cleaned and peeled mushrooms, lemon juice, and cold water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Transfer the mushrooms to a plate.

Make the soup

  1. In the same stewpan, melt ½ ounce of butter.

  2. Stir in 1 ounce of flour with a wooden spoon until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the strained chicken stock and mushroom peelings, stirring until it boils.

  4. Let it boil for 10 minutes to cook the flour.

  5. Add the cream and stir well 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.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Provides the meat for the soup and flavour from the bones in the stock.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce-like body when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and is used to cook the flour into a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished soup.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body; their peelings are used to flavour the stock.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour for 10 minutes. Flour must be cooked fully after it is whisked into the hot stock, or the soup tastes raw and pasty. Stirring while it boils keeps it smooth and free of lumps.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, cream):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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