Name: Chicken Broth
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; 3 pints water; 1-2 blades of mace; dried toast

Why it works: Chicken and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,208 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

1 whole chicken
3 pints water
1-2 blades of mace
dried toast

Directions

Make the broth

Skin the chicken.
Place the chicken in a pot with 3 pints of water and 1-2 blades of mace.
Boil over low heat for 1 hour.
Pour the broth into a basin and remove the fat.

Serve

Serve with dried toast.

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 + macetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,208 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken: Provides the meat, bones and collagen that flavour and body the broth.
Water: Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour from the chicken during simmering.
Mace: Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the broth.

“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.