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Chicken Broth

A clear soup made by simmering a whole fowl with water, salt, pepper, mace, onion, and optional almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut up the old fowl and cover it with 1 quart of water.

  2. Stew gently until the fowl is tender, adding water as needed to maintain the liquid level.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, mace, and onion.

  4. If desired, pound the almonds with water and stir into the broth for added flavor.

  5. Strain the broth and let it cool, then remove the fat before reheating for use.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Pepper + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Old fowl
Provides the meat and collagen that give the broth body and flavor as it stews.
Almonds
Pounded almonds add richness and a nutty flavor and slightly thicken the broth.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the fowl is tender. Gentle simmering extracts flavor and gelatin slowly while keeping the meat tender; a hard boil makes the broth cloudy and the meat tough. Adding water as needed keeps the fowl submerged so it cooks evenly.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mace, onion):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mace, onion. 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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