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White Broth

A clear veal broth made with salt pork, suet, carrot, onion, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, flour, white wine, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

White Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the salt pork, suet, carrot, onion, herbs, peppercorns, and cloves for 4 minutes in a pot.

  2. Add the flour, white wine, and knuckle of veal.

  3. Pour in the water and bring to a simmer.

  4. Simmer for 3 hours, then strain the broth.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Provides the main meaty flavour and gelatin that gives the broth body.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding savoury richness to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly and helps give it body.
White wine
Adds acidity that helps draw flavour out of the browned aromatics.

The step that matters

Browning the salt pork, suet, and vegetables. Browning builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale aromatics give a flatter broth, so they should colour gently without scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, thyme, parsley, shallot, clove, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, thyme, parsley, shallot, clove, flour. 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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