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Chicken Soup, Delicious

A chicken soup with rice, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Soup, Delicious

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Joint the chicken and boil it in water until very tender.

  2. Pour the broth through a colander and return it to the kettle.

  3. Soak the rice and add it to the broth.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Chop the potato, onion, and turnip, and add them to the soup after 1 hour.

  2. Dice the celery and add it 20 minutes before serving.

  3. Add the tomatoes and season with pepper and salt just before serving.

  4. For a richer flavor, stir in milk or cream just 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the broth its main meaty flavor as it simmers and becomes tender.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during cooking.
Potato
Adds body and starch, softening into the broth as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and brightness that balance the rich broth.
Milk or cream (in the method)
Adds fat and a smoother, richer mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the chicken until very tender. The chicken must simmer long enough for collagen and connective tissue to break down, which gives tender meat and a fuller broth. Stopping early leaves tough meat and a thinner flavor.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, onion, potato, tomato, celery, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, onion, potato, tomato, celery, pepper. 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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