Name: Beef Broth
Ingredients: 1 pound beef; 1 quart cold water; ½ cup rice (or less tapioca, soaked in cold water); Salt to taste

Why it works: Beef and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,265 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Beef Broth

Ingredients

1 pound beef
1 quart cold water
½ cup rice (or less tapioca, soaked in cold water)
Salt to taste

Directions

Make the broth

Place the beef in a pot with cold water to extract the juices.
Bring to a boil and cook until the meat is thoroughly cooked.
Remove the meat, discarding fat and skin.

Finish the broth

Add the soaked rice (or tapioca) to the pot and cook until done.
Season according to taste and let cool to remove excess fat.

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.

Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,265 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Releases juices and flavour into the water as it simmers, giving the broth its body.
Rice: Adds body and thickens the broth as its starch cooks into the liquid.

“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.