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Chicken Broth

A clear chicken broth made by simmering chicken, herbs, onion, mace, peppercorns, and salt in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken and all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, skimming the broth regularly.

Strain and cool

  1. Strain the broth and cool it in a safe place.

Serve

  1. Remove the fat from the top before reheating.

  2. Warm up the desired amount and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Chicken + macetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl or chicken joints
Release flavour and body into the water as they simmer.
Water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the chicken.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim regularly. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, while a hard boil emulsifies fat and cloudy particles into it. Skimming removes the foam and impurities that rise to the surface, giving a cleaner-tasting result.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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