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Chicken Broth

A clear broth made by simmering chicken pieces with water, mace, onion, herbs, salt, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chicken Broth

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fowl into pieces and place in a saucepan with all ingredients.

Make the broth

  1. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, skimming the broth carefully.

  2. Strain the broth and cool it, then remove the fat from the top.

Serve

  1. Reheat the desired amount of broth to serve.

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

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

  2. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. 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

Fowl or chicken joints
Release gelatin, collagen and flavour into the water as they simmer slowly.
Water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the meat and aromatics.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Peppercorns
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma to the broth.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming during the simmer. Impurities and fat rise and cling to the surface as the broth simmers. Skimming them off keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, while a hard boil would emulsify fat into it and cloud the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion. 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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