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Lec or Beer Brotu

A beef broth made with a leg of beef, water, mace, parsley, and bread crust, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Lec or Beer Brotu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the bone of the beef in several places.

  2. Place the beef in a pan with water and remove the scum as it rises.

Make the broth

  1. Add mace, bread crust, and parsley to the pot.

  2. Boil until the beef is tender.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread.

  2. Cut the toasted bread into diamond shapes.

  3. Lay the toasted bread in the bottom of a tureen.

  4. Place the meat on top.

  5. Pour the broth over all.

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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

  5. Mace + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty flavor, and its bones and connective tissue release body into the broth as it simmers.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Remove the scum as it rises. The scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the water heats. Skimming it off keeps the broth clear and prevents a cloudy, off-tasting result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, 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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