Name: Chicken Broth
Ingredients: water from boiled chicken; bones of the chicken; 1 onion, finely chopped; 1 carrot, chopped; 1 turnip, chopped; small bunch of parsley; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ½ cup vermicelli

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

Cool the water used to boil the chicken to make broth.
The next day, skim off the fat from the broth.
Add the chicken bones, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, salt, and pepper to a soup pot.

Simmer and serve

Boil for two hours.
Remove the bones with a skimmer.
Add the vermicelli.
Boil for an additional hour.
Serve the chicken broth hot.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 bones: Release collagen and gelatin and flavour into the broth during long simmering.
Onion: Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Vermicelli: Adds starch and body to the broth and soaks up some liquid as it cooks.

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper. 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.