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Chicken and Corn Broth

A broth made from boiled chicken, corn, butter, flour, herbs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 and Corn Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Save the broth from boiled chicken and let it cool to remove fat.

  2. In a pot, combine the broth and corn, and boil slowly for 1 hour after it starts bubbling.

  3. Strain the mixture through a colander, season with salt and pepper, and add herbs.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the strained broth to boiling, stir in the butter and flour mixture, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the broth into a serving tureen and add the boiling milk.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken broth
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the corn flavor.
Corn
Releases sweetness and body into the broth during long simmering.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the broth slightly while butter adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the broth's flavor when stirred in hot.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid long enough to dissolve and thicken smoothly; adding it too cold or without stirring causes lumps. Simmering afterward cooks out the raw starch taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, corn, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, corn, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, milk. 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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