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Grand Bouillon Maigre

A lean fish broth made with peas, vegetables, and halved whiting, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Grand Bouillon Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pea broth

  1. Cook the dried peas in 3 liters of water with a little coarse sea salt, butter, nutmeg, and parsley for 4 hours.

  2. Remove from heat and strain the broth through a fine sieve after 30 to 40 minutes.

Make the fish broth

  1. While the peas are cooking, sauté the minced carrots, turnips, onion, and celery in butter over moderate heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until lightly colored.

  2. Add the halved whiting and minced leek, then pour in 10 liters of water and the strained pea broth.

  3. Bring to a boil for 3 hours, then strain the broth through a fine sieve.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peas
Starch and fiber from the peas thicken the broth and give it body.
Whiting
As the fish cooks, it releases savory flavor and gelatin that add richness to the broth.
Butter
Fat carries aroma and adds a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.
Carrots
Sweet, aromatic base; lightly browning them adds deeper flavor.
Onion
Sautéing softens its sharpness and builds savory, browned flavor.
Celery
Provides aromatic, savory depth to the base of the broth.

The step that matters

Sautéing the vegetables until lightly colored. Browning the vegetables over moderate heat drives Maillard reactions and caramelization, building savory flavor. Too much heat or too long scorches them and leaves bitter notes in the broth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, parsley, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, parsley, carrot, turnip, onion, celery. 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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