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 ↓
Chicken Broth
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the broth
Remove the skin and rump from the chicken.
Place the chicken parts in the water used for boiling.
Add the mace, onion, and peppercorns.
Simmer until the broth has a pleasant flavor.
If needed, add more water.
Add the almonds
Finely grind the almonds with 1 teaspoon of water.
Boil the almond mixture in the broth.
Strain and chill
Strain the broth.
Let it cool.
Remove the fat from the cooled broth.
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.
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Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,814 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,769 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,078 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Chicken + almondtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together838 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Mace + almondtop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,010 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken body and legs
- Release flavor and gelatin into the water to give the broth body.
- Sweet almonds
- Add a subtle nutty flavor and some body to the broth once ground and boiled.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, almond):
- Garlicfits better
- Cuminfits better
- Turmericfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, almond. 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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