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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made by simmering a whole chicken with water, rice, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into neat joints, removing all the fat.

  2. Place the chicken in a saucepan with the water and cook slowly for one hour.

  3. Remove the meat and return the bones to the pan.

Make the broth

  1. Add washed rice, salt, and pepper, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the broth and add some of the white meat cut into small dice.

Serve

  1. Stir in the parsley just before serving, and serve with toast or crackers.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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

Chicken
Provides the meat and flavour that gives the broth its body and savoury taste.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Water
Extracts flavour and gelatin from the chicken to form the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the chicken slowly. Gentle simmering draws flavour and gelatin from the chicken into the water while keeping the broth clear. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes it cloudy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Corianderfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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