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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made by simmering a whole chicken with onion, salt, peppercorns, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into joints and remove as much fat as possible.

  2. Cover the chicken with cold water and let it stand for 30 minutes.

Cook the broth

  1. Place the chicken on the stove and heat slowly.

  2. Add salt, peppercorns, and the small onion when heating.

  3. Simmer until the meat is cooked from the bones.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the broth before serving.

  2. Remove the fat.

  3. Add a little well-cooked rice.

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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 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

Old chicken
Provides the meat and the flavour-rich collagen that gives the broth body.
Well-cooked rice
Adds starch that thickens the broth slightly and softens its texture.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and simmer gently. Heating slowly and keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets the meat and connective tissue release flavour and gelatin gradually. Boiling hard makes the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice. 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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