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Bacon and Fowl Broth

A broth made with bacon, chickens, water, onions, cloves, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bacon and Fowl Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Start the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the bacon and fowls.

  2. Add 3 pints of water and bring to a boil.

Season and simmer

  1. Chop the onions and add them to the pot.

  2. Season with cloves and pepper to taste.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

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.

  1. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour to the broth.
Fowls (chickens)
Release meat, collagen and savoury flavour into the broth as they cook.
Onions
Release sweet, aromatic flavour into the broth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle after the boil. Once the water boils, the heat should drop to a gentle simmer. A hard boil emulsifies fat into the liquid, making the broth cloudy and greasy, and can toughen the meat as the proteins contract.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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