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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made by simmering chicken bones, vegetables, and seasonings for 1½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the chicken bones.

  2. Chop the bones finely and place them in a saucepan with cold water.

  3. Add salt and pepper, then bring to a boil.

Simmer

  1. Skim off any foam, then add the carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, clove, bay leaf, leeks, and thyme.

  2. Cover the pan and let it simmer for 1½ hours.

  3. Skim again and strain the broth through cheesecloth.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in cups.

  2. For a cold broth, cool in a stone jar placed in cracked ice.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body and savour.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that deepens the broth's flavour.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the simmering liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic compounds that build the broth's background flavour.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam. Foam and coagulated proteins rise as the liquid heats; removing them keeps the broth clear and prevents off-flavours from returning into the liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley. 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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