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Consomme of Fresh Vegetable Roots

A clear consommé made from carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter, water, peas, lettuces, salt, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, dried peas, and white haricots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Consomme of Fresh Vegetable Roots

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a stewpan, combine sliced carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, and butter.

  2. Cook gently until the mixture turns red.

  3. Add water and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  4. Stir in peas and lettuces.

  5. Add salt, whole pepper, nutmeg, cloves, dried peas, and white haricots.

  6. Simmer for 3 hours, skimming off grease.

Strain

  1. Strain the mixture through a cloth and set aside for use.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness and body, and colour the stock as they cook down in butter.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they soften and brown gently in butter.
Butter
Carries the aromatic vegetables' flavour and adds richness to the stock.
Dried peas
Release starch and body into the liquid during the long simmer, thickening the stock.
White haricots
Add starch and body to the liquid during the long simmer, thickening the stock.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the mixture turns red. Cooking the vegetables slowly in butter softens them and draws out sweetness without scorching. Hot, fast cooking would burn the butter and leave a bitter, dark flavour in the stock.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter. 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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