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Quick Bouillon

A quick broth made with butter, onion, beef, chicken, garlic cloves, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, water, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the stock

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the onion.

  2. Cook until the onion is thoroughly browned.

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

  4. Cover the saucepan and place it on the back of the stove to slowly heat.

  5. Let it come to a boil.

  6. Simmer gently for two hours.

  7. Strain the mixture.

Clarify and finish

  1. Return the liquid to the saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Beat the white of one egg and mix it with ½ cup of cold water.

  4. Crush the eggshell and add it to the egg and water mixture.

  5. Add the mixture to the boiling bouillon.

  6. Boil for four minutes.

  7. Let it stand for one minute to settle.

  8. Strain through cheesecloth wrung out of 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. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

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

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 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

Beef
Adds deep meaty flavor and body to the broth during long simmering.
Onion
Browning in butter builds savory, caramelized flavor into the broth.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, trapping cloudy particles so they can be strained out clear.
Chicken
Bones release gelatin and flavor, giving the broth body and richness.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until thoroughly browned. Browning caramelizes the onion's sugars and proteins, creating the deep color and savory flavor the broth depends on. Pale onion gives a weaker, flatter stock.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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