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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made from chicken parts, water, mace, onion, peppercorns, and ground almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Chicken Broth

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

  1. Remove the skin and rump from the chicken.

  2. Place the chicken parts in the water used for boiling.

  3. Add the mace, onion, and peppercorns.

  4. Simmer until the broth has a pleasant flavor.

  5. If needed, add more water.

Add the almonds

  1. Finely grind the almonds with 1 teaspoon of water.

  2. Boil the almond mixture in the broth.

Strain and chill

  1. Strain the broth.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Remove the fat from the cooled broth.

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. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  3. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Chicken + almondtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

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

  5. Mace + almondtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. 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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