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Chicken Bouillon

A clear chicken broth made by simmering a whole chicken with vegetables, then enriched with egg white and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken in a large pot with cold water, celery, onion, and parsley.

  2. Heat slowly on the back of the stove until it simmers.

  3. Cook for 6 hours, skimming often.

  4. Strain the broth and let it sit overnight.

Clarify and finish

  1. Remove all fat from the surface.

  2. Heat the broth and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Beat the egg white with ½ cup of cold water and add it to the broth.

  4. Wash the eggshell and add it to the broth, ensuring no yolk gets in.

  5. Boil the broth rapidly for 10 minutes.

  6. Add 1 cup of cold water and boil for 5 more minutes.

  7. Serve in cups topped with whipped cream.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Its proteins coagulate as the broth heats, trapping cloudy particles so they can be strained out, clarifying the broth.
Chicken
Releases its flavor and gelatin into the water during long simmering, giving the broth its body and taste.

The step that matters

Boil the broth rapidly after adding the egg white. The egg white and shell must be given time to coagulate and rise with the impurities. Boiling too gently or stirring can leave the broth cloudy, and a yolk in the mix would add fat and prevent clarification.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, parsley, pepper, egg, cream. 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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