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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made by simmering chicken parts with flour, water, salt, pepper, parsley, and toasted bread.

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

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 Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the chicken parts in a kettle and dredge with flour.

  2. Add 1 pint of cold water and let soak for 45 minutes.

Make the broth

  1. Simmer slowly, covered, until the meat falls from the bones.

  2. Strain the broth and return it to the stove.

  3. Add 1 cup of water to the bones and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Combine this liquid with the broth.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and minced parsley to taste.

  2. Serve with tiny squares of toasted bread browned in the oven.

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

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken neck, leg and wing tips
Provides the meat, bones and collagen that give the broth its body and flavor.
Flour
Dredging the chicken lightly thickens the broth slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly, covered, until the meat falls from the bones. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones without clouding the broth. Boiling vigorously emulsifies fat and fine particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pepper, bread. 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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