Name: Broth with Fowl
Ingredients: ½ pound barley; 4-5 heads celery, washed and chopped; 1 large onion; 1 bundle sweet herbs; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 cock or large fowl, cleaned and washed; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Turnips, cleaned and chopped; Carrots, cleaned and chopped

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Broth with Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine barley, celery, onion, sweet herbs, and parsley.
Boil for 1 hour.
Add the cleaned fowl and boil until the broth is flavorful.
Season with salt and remove the onion and sweet herbs before serving.
For a variation, use a sheep's head instead of fowl, chopped into pieces.
For a beef broth, use 6 pounds of thick flank with 6 quarts of water.
Skim the broth, then add barley and boil gently for 1 hour.
Add turnips and carrots, and boil until the broth is good.
Serve with the beef in the center, surrounded by turnips and carrots, and pour the broth over all.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together629 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley: Thickens the broth and adds body as its starch softens during long boiling.
Fowl: Releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth its savory richness.
Celery: Contributes aromatic flavor that builds the base of the broth.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and soften into the broth as it simmers.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and color to the broth as they cook.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, celery, parsley, turnip, carrot):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, celery, parsley, turnip, carrot. 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.