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Soup Stock

A clear broth made by simmering chicken or bones, meat, vegetables, herbs, and salt in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Soup Stock

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chicken or bones with the lean meat and water in a pot.

  2. Simmer for several hours until half the water remains.

  3. Add the cut-up vegetables, parsley, celery, peppercorn, onion, and salt.

  4. Continue to simmer for an additional half hour.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or bones
Provides collagen and gelatin, giving the stock body and a rich mouthfeel as it simmers.
Lean meat
Adds meaty flavor to the broth during the long simmer.
Water
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones and meat.
Onion
Contributes savory, aromatic sweetness to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boil. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin slowly while keeping the broth clear. A hard boil emulsifies fats and fine particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, celery, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, celery, onion. 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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