Name: Chicken Broth
Ingredients: 1 small chicken; cold water to cover; 2 small onions, sliced; ½ cup celery, finely chopped

Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

1 small chicken
cold water to cover
2 small onions, sliced
½ cup celery, finely chopped

Directions

Place the chicken in a pot and cover with cold water.
Add the sliced onions and chopped celery.
Boil for several hours until the chicken is cooked.
If you don't have celery, add chopped parsley before serving.

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.

Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 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

Chicken: Provides the meat and flavour that dissolve into the liquid as it simmers.
Onions: Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Celery: Adds savoury, herbal aroma that rounds out the broth's flavour.