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Chicken Broth

A simple broth made by simmering chicken and optional vegetables, optionally thickened with arrowroot and finished with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Skin and cut up the chicken.

  2. Place the dark meat in a pot with 1 quart of water and boil slowly until it breaks down.

  3. Strain the liquid and return it to the pot.

Thicken and finish

  1. If no vegetables are permitted, thicken the broth with 2 tablespoons of arrowroot.

  2. If vegetables are allowed, add sliced onion, turnip, grated parsnip, and sliced potato to the broth, then strain out the solids.

  3. Reserve the white meat for another dish, stewing it in fresh oyster liquid with a bit of butter.

  4. If the patient is well enough, stir in a beaten egg just before serving.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Arrowroot + parsniptop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Dark meat breaks down during slow boiling, releasing flavor and body into the water to form the broth.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly body-filled liquid when heated.
Egg
Beaten egg stirred into hot broth partly sets, adding richness and a soft, silky texture.

The step that matters

Boil the dark meat slowly. Gentle simmering lets collagen and flavor leach out slowly into the water; a hard rolling boil can cloud the broth and toughen the meat.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, turnip, parsnip, potato, butter, meat):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, turnip, parsnip, potato, butter, meat. 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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