Name: Chicken Broth
Ingredients: 1 chicken, cut into joints; 1 quart cold water; a little coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons rice

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

Ingredients

1 chicken, cut into joints
1 quart cold water
a little coarse sea salt
2 tablespoons rice

Directions

Prepare

Scald the chicken legs and remove the skin.

Make the broth

Place the chicken in a clean saucepan with cold water, salt, and rice.
Simmer gently for two hours.

Serve

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.

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.

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: Provides the meat and collagen-rich body that gives the broth its flavour and richness.
Cold water: Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour from the chicken as it simmers.
Rice: Adds body and a little starch that gently thickens the broth as it cooks.