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Condensed Bouillon

A thickened broth made by simmering beef, veal, and vegetables with butter and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Condensed Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut all the meat into pieces.

Brown the meat

  1. Melt the butter in an iron pot over medium heat.

  2. Brown the butter.

  3. Add the meat.

  4. Stir until browned.

  5. Place the browned meat in a cage.

  6. Handle the cage.

Finish

  1. Clarify the broth.

  2. Process it as you would for Bouillon.

  3. For a cheaper version, omit the butter and browning of meat.

  4. Add 2 lbs of salt.

  5. Color with 1 pint of Caramel.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Leek + carrottop 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

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavor of the broth as it simmers.
Knuckle of veal
Adds gelatin-rich body and a fuller mouthfeel to the finished broth.
Butter or purified fat
Carries flavor and helps brown the meat before it goes into the broth.
Chopped leeks
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.
Caramel
Adds color to the finished broth; used only if desired.

The step that matters

Brown the butter and meat. Browning creates Maillard reactions that build deeper, roasted flavor. Pale meat yields a flatter, less complex broth, so brown until the surface is well colored.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, parsley, pepper, beef, veal, leek, carrot. 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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