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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made by simmering chicken pieces with water, salt, and optional herbs, thickened with flour or sago.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Parsley and celery 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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin and fat from the chicken, then cut it in half and remove the lungs.

  2. Cut the chicken halves into small pieces, including bones.

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken pieces in a pot, sprinkle with salt, and pour in 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Simmer for 1.5 hours, then keep warm for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the broth through a sieve to separate it from the solids.

  4. Season to taste and thicken with flour or sago if desired.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and bones that release flavour and body into the simmering water.
Cold water
Acts as the cooking liquid that slowly extracts gelatin and flavour from the chicken.
Flour or sago
Optional thickener that swells in the hot broth to give it more body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently over a long period. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil extracts flavour and gelatin slowly while keeping the broth clear. Boiling vigorously emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes it cloudy.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, parsley, allspice, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, parsley, allspice, celery. 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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