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Chicken Consomme

A clear chicken consommé made by simmering roasted fowls with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Consomme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowls

  1. Clean, draw, and truss the fowls.

  2. Roast the fowls until slightly browned, about half cooked.

Make the broth

  1. Place the fowls in a soup pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, sweet herbs, parsley, and bay leaf.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the fowls are well done and the broth reduces by one-third.

  4. Strain the broth through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve the broth hot with toasted bread or in cups.

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

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

  2. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Old fowls
Provide the meat and bones that give the consommé its body and rich chicken flavour.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavour to the broth during the long simmer.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the broth.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. Boiling vigorously breaks up the fat and proteins, making the broth cloudy. A gentle simmer lets the liquid reduce while keeping it clear and well flavoured.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, bread. 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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