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Consomme

A clear beef consommé made by simmering beef, chicken, and vegetables with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Consomme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Add enough cold water to nearly cover the meat and other ingredients.

  3. Let it stand to infuse for 1 hour.

Make the consommé

  1. Place the pan on a hot range and stir gently for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour in 2½ quarts of boiling water and stir until it boils.

  3. Cover the pan and let it simmer slowly for 1½ hours.

Strain

  1. Strain the consommé through a napkin into another saucepan.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw beef (shin)
Releases meat flavor and gelatin into the broth, giving body and savoriness.
Bones
Add gelatin and depth of flavor as they simmer slowly in the liquid.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic flavor to the broth.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and mild sweetness as it cooks down.
Leek
Adds a gentle, aromatic sweetness to the clarified broth.

The step that matters

Stir gently while heating the pan. Stirring too hard breaks up the meat and clouds the broth, so it stays clear. Gentle stirring lets the proteins gather into the raft that clarifies the consommé.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, chicken, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, chicken, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, celery. 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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