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Chicken Soup

A hearty chicken soup with meatballs made from boiled eggs, bread crumbs, and chopped chicken.

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

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl and ham

  1. Cut the fowls into pieces as for fricassee.

  2. Put the fowls and ham into a pot with enough water to cover them and stew for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the breasts and add the remaining boiling water.

  4. Keep the soup stewing slowly while you chop the white meat.

Make the meatballs

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs smooth, moistening with a few spoonfuls of soup.

  2. Mix the egg yolks with bread crumbs and chopped meat to form small balls.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup after boiling for 2.5 hours, removing meat and bones.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, and chopped parsley.

  3. Drop in the prepared meatballs and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the milk thickened with flour gradually, boil once, and serve.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls
Provide the main meat and flavour that build the body of the broth.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth as it simmers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks bind the meatball mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the meatballs so they stay tender.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk so it blends smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk thickened with flour. Flour mixed into cold milk can clump, and boiling a flour-thickened dairy liquid too long or too hard can make it grainy or split. Add it gradually, stirring, and boil only once.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, bread, parsley, milk, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, bread, parsley, milk, flour. 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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