Name: Chicken Broth or Soup
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, cleaned and cut into pieces; 1 quart (4 cups) water; Coarse sea salt to taste; ⅓ cup rice (optional)

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Broth or Soup

Ingredients

1 whole chicken, cleaned and cut into pieces
1 quart (4 cups) water
Coarse sea salt to taste
⅓ cup rice (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Wash the chicken pieces thoroughly.
Place the chicken in a saucepan with water.

Cook the broth

Boil slowly for about 1.5 hours.
Skim off any foam that rises to the surface.
Season with coarse sea salt to taste.
If using, add rice to the saucepan and cook until tender.

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.

Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Gives the broth its main flavor and body as it simmers in the water.
Rice: Thickens the broth slightly as its starch softens during cooking.