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Celery Broth

A clear broth made with celery, beef, herbs, egg whites, salt, pepper, and water, simmered for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Celery Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the celery, remove the hearts, discard spoiled leaves, and chop the branches and roots into small pieces.

  2. Chop the beef finely and place it in a saucepan with the chopped celery, parsley, chervil, chives, egg whites, salt, and pepper.

Make the broth

  1. Mix the ingredients and heat for five minutes.

  2. Gradually stir in the water and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain the broth before serving.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 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

Beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavor and body as it simmers.
Egg whites
Bind to fine particles and help clarify the broth as they set.
Fresh celery
Provides the main aromatic flavor of the broth.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the water. Adding water slowly while stirring keeps the meat, celery and egg whites suspended and evenly mixed, so they do not clump or stick to the bottom of the pan before the broth comes to a boil.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, chervil, chive, egg, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, chervil, chive, egg, pepper. 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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