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Quick Bouillon

A clear beef and chicken broth thickened with egg white and eggshell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Quick Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add sliced onion and cook until soft.

  3. Add beef, broken chicken bones, celery, cloves, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, and cold water.

  4. Cover saucepan and heat slowly on the back of the stove until it reaches a boil.

  5. Once boiling, strain the mixture and return the liquid to the saucepan.

Clarify and strain

  1. Beat the egg white in ½ cup of water until blended, then add the crushed eggshell.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling bouillon and boil for 4 minutes.

  3. Let it stand for 1 minute to settle, then strain through a cheesecloth wrung out in cold water.

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

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

  4. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Adds meaty flavour and body to the broth as it simmers.
Egg white
Binds fine particles as it cooks, so they collect and can be strained out for a clear broth.
Chicken bones
Release gelatin and minerals during long simmering, adding body and savoury depth.
Onion
Softened in butter first, adding sweetness and aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg mixture and boiling. The egg white must be stirred in evenly and left to rise and set, trapping cloudy particles. Stirring too late or too vigorously after that breaks the mass and leaves the broth cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, chicken, carrot, parsley, egg, 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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