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Potage De Garbure a LA Crecy

A hearty French soup made with veal shank, roasted hens, root vegetables, and bread, finished with carrot puree and clarified broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage De Garbure a LA Crecy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the veal shank, roasted hens, and broth in a large pot, then skim off any foam.

  2. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, and celery. Simmer for 5 hours.

  3. Remove the meats and degrease the broth. Mix the beaten egg white with cold broth to clarify.

  4. Bring the clarified broth to a boil for 10 minutes, then strain through a cloth.

  5. Reduce the broth by half to concentrate the flavor.

Prepare the bread and puree

  1. Dry the bread slices in the oven.

  2. Sauté the dried bread slices in butter with some of the reduced broth and a pinch of pepper.

  3. Prepare a smooth carrot puree as indicated in the chapter on root purees.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a flat soup tureen, layer the sautéed bread, then cover with carrot puree.

  2. Repeat the layering with more sautéed bread and carrot puree.

  3. Place the tureen over low heat to gratin the soup.

  4. Serve the remaining broth in a separate pot for guests to add as desired.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Egg white
Its proteins coagulate as the broth heats, trapping particles so the broth becomes clear.
Bread
Dried and sautéed in butter, it soaks up broth and gives the layers body and structure.
Carrot puree
Adds smooth body and natural sweetness, thickening the layers and softening the bread.
Veal shank
Its collagen breaks down during long simmering, enriching the broth with body and gelatin.
Roasted hens
Roasted meat and bones add deep savory flavor to the long-simmered broth.

The step that matters

Clarifying the broth with egg white. The egg white must be mixed in cold and the broth brought to a boil gently; if stirred too early or boiled hard, the raft breaks up and the broth stays cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, egg, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, egg, pepper. 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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