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Chicken Consomme

A clear chicken broth made by simmering roasted fowls with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Consomme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, draw, and truss the fowls.

  2. Roast them until slightly browned, about half cooked.

Simmer

  1. Place the fowls in a soup pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, sweet herbs, parsley, and bay leaf.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the fowls are cooked and the broth is reduced by one-third.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the broth through a fine sieve.

  2. Serve the broth with toasted bread or in cups without bread.

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.

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

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

  2. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Old fowls
Provide the meat and body that give the consommé its rich chicken flavour.
Cold water
Extracts flavour and gelatin from the fowls slowly as it heats.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavour to the broth during simmering.
Black pepper
Adds a mild, sharp aroma to the seasoned broth.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. A rolling boil breaks up the fat and proteins, leaving the broth cloudy. Gentle simmering keeps it clear and lets flavour extract slowly from the fowls.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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