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Soup Stock

A clear liquid made by simmering chicken or bones with vegetables, herbs, and seasonings.

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 meat and water in a pot.

  2. Add cut-up vegetables, parsley, celery, peppercorns, onion, and salt.

  3. Bring to a simmer and cook for several hours.

  4. Reduce the liquid until half remains.

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 with meat
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the stock body and depth.
Lean meat
Adds savory meat flavor to the liquid during the long simmer.
Water
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones and meat.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks into the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. A hard boil makes the liquid cloudy and emulsifies fat into it, while a gentle simmer keeps the broth clearer and cleaner-tasting.

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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