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Soup

Soup Stock

A clear stock made by simmering chicken or bones with water, vegetables, herbs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Soup Stock

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

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

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

  3. Add vegetables, parsley, peppercorn, onion, and salt.

  4. Simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Strain and skim

  1. Strain the stock and cool it.

  2. Remove any fat that rises to the top.

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

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or bones with meat
Provides the main flavor, gelatin and body that the stock is built on.
Water
Acts as the solvent that slowly extracts flavor and collagen from the bones and meat.
Onion
Adds savory depth and mild sweetness as it simmers into the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until half the water remains. Long, gentle simmering extracts collagen and flavor slowly; a hard boil makes the stock cloudy and greasy, while too little reduction leaves it thin and weak.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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