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Bouillon Maigre

A lean vegetable broth made with carrots, turnips, onions, cabbage, parsnips, celery, peas, potatoes, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the sliced carrots, turnips, onions, cabbage, parsnips, celery, water, fresh butter, and parsley in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil until the water evaporates.

  3. Add the peas and diced potatoes.

  4. Pour in the pea broth.

  5. Simmer for three hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Season to taste.

  2. Strain 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.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Onions
Release sweetness and savoury aroma as they soften and brown slowly in the pot.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Parsnips
Contribute sweet, earthy flavour and body to the broth during long simmering.
Potatoes
Release starch into the liquid, giving the broth a slightly fuller texture.
Butter
Adds fat that carries aroma and gives the broth a rounder mouthfeel.
Celery
Adds fresh, aromatic background flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil until the water evaporates. With only half a cup of water, the vegetables and butter can scorch on the base of the pot before the liquid is gone. Stirring and keeping the heat moderate helps the vegetables soften and brown evenly without burning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, cabbage, parsnip, celery, butter, parsley. 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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