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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made from a whole chicken, rice or barley or vermicelli, celery, parsley, parsley root, and an egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

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 Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the broth

  1. Boil the whole chicken in water until cooked through.

  2. Add rice, barley, or vermicelli, celery, and parsley to the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. When the broth is cold, beat the egg yolk in a small amount of broth.

  2. Stir the egg yolk mixture back into the broth 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the main flavor and collagen that gives the broth body.
Rice, barley, or vermicelli
Adds starch that softens as it cooks and lightly thickens the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor as it simmers in the broth.
Egg yolk
Enriches the broth and thickens it slightly when blended in gently.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg yolk. Adding raw yolk straight into hot broth can scramble it into specks. Beating it with a small amount of broth first gently raises its temperature, so it blends smoothly when stirred back in.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, parsley, egg. 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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