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Bouillon

A vegetable broth made with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, lettuces, chervil, cabbage, parsnips, butter, water, peas, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bouillon

Why it works: Lettuce and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 396 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine carrots, turnips, onions, celery, lettuces, chervil, cabbage, parsnips, butter, and water in a copper pot or stock-pot.

  2. Cook the vegetables until the water evaporates and they begin to fry slightly in the butter.

  3. Add more water to the pot.

  4. Stir in the peas, salt, and pepper.

  5. Let the mixture boil for 3 to 4 hours.

  6. Strain 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.

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. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

Butter
Fats the vegetables as they fry, adding richness and helping them brown slightly.
Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the broth as they cook down.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften and cook down.
Peas
Add sweetness and body to the broth during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables until the water evaporates. The vegetables need to fry gently in the butter rather than stew. Keeping the heat moderate lets their sugars brown lightly, which builds flavor. If the pot is too hot, they can scorch before the liquid is reduced.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, lettuce, chervil, cabbage, parsnip. 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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