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Bouillon Soup

A beef broth made with round beef, onions, carrots, parsley, mace, cloves, celery seed, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Bouillon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim off all fatty skin from the beef.

  2. Pour water into a pot and add the beef.

  3. Let it simmer for six hours, skimming off any grease.

Add vegetables and simmer

  1. Slice the carrots and stick 4 whole cloves into each onion.

  2. Add the onions, carrots, celery seed, parsley, mace, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  3. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a cloth, pouring the liquid first and then adding the meat to drain without squeezing.

  2. For color, add 2 teaspoons of burnt sugar if desired.

  3. Enhance flavor with walnut catsup, mushroom, and a little Worcestershire sauce.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Provides the meat flavor and gelatin that give the broth body as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and a mellow background flavor to the broth.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma that brightens the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Skimming during the long simmer. Fat and foam rise to the surface during a long simmer. Skimming them off keeps the broth clear and prevents a greasy taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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