Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Soup

A hearty soup made with hens, ham hock, rice, tomatoes, corn, thyme, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Soup

Why it works: Tomato and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,370 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the hens and ham hock in a soup pot.

  2. Add the washed rice and salt, then fill the pot nearly full with cold water.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil.

  4. If desired, add the tomatoes, corn, and thyme.

  5. Mix the flour and butter together, then stir the flour-butter mixture into the soup.

  6. Bring the soup to a boil again.

  7. Serve hot.

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. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

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

  2. Rice + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  4. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + thymetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together912 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hens
Provide the main meat and body that flavour the broth.
Rice
Adds starch that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Carries flour into the broth and adds richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour-butter mixture. Flour clumps if it is dropped in dry or added to hot liquid without being blended with fat first. Mixing it with butter and stirring it in well lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the broth smoothly as it heats.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, rice, corn, thyme, flour, butter):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, rice, corn, thyme, flour, butter. 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.

More chicken soup recipes

White 9Almond 8Creamy 7Friar's 6Plain 5with Dumplings 3 See all 163 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes