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Soup

Chicken-broth

A light chicken broth thickened with egg yolk, seasoned with parsley or celery and cayenne pepper, optionally mixed with rice, vermicelli, or macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken-broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the chicken broth down by half.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with the soft water.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the broth along with parsley or celery.

  4. For added flavor, stir in Cayenne pepper.

  5. Optionally, add boiled rice, vermicelli, or macaroni.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavor.
Egg yolk
Sets into soft ribbons when added to the hot broth, giving the soup body.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, pepper, rice):

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, pepper, rice. 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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