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Soup

Chicken Bouillon

A clear chicken broth flavored with butter, carrot, celery, onion, cloves, bay leaves, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, celery, and onion; fry until browned.

  3. Add the browned vegetables to the chicken broth.

  4. Add the cloves and bay leaves; simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Serve 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.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the dish.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns in the butter.
Celery
Adds aromatic depth as it browns with the other vegetables.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns.
Bay leaves
Contribute a subtle herbal aroma during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 1 hour. A gentle simmer extracts flavour from the vegetables and spices while keeping the broth clear. A hard boil makes it cloudy and can concentrate it unevenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, celery, onion, chicken, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, onion, chicken, 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.

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