Name: Meagre Broth with Roots
Ingredients: 1 bunch young carrots; 1 bunch young turnips; ¼ bunch leeks; ¼ bunch onions; 2 heads celery; 19 cloves; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 6 quarts water

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meagre Broth with Roots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery into small pieces.

Simmer

Combine all ingredients in a large pot with 6 quarts of water.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.

Strain and serve

Strain the broth and serve warm.

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.

Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,310 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

Carrots: Release sweetness and body into the broth as they simmer.
Turnips: Add mild, slightly sweet flavour and body to the broth.
Celery: Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth base.
Onions: Add savoury depth and aroma as they cook down in the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, celery, clove, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Lettucefits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, celery, clove, 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.