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Consomme Op Fresh Vegetable Boots

A clear vegetable consommé made from carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter, peas, lettuce, and beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Consomme Op Fresh Vegetable Boots

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the stock

  1. In a stewpan, combine sliced carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, and butter.

  2. Cook gently until the mixture turns red.

  3. Add water, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.

  4. Stir in peas and chopped lettuce.

  5. Add salt, whole peppercorns, nutmeg, cloves, dried peas, and white haricots.

  6. Simmer for 3 hours at 300°F (150°C).

Finish and store

  1. Skim off grease and strain through a cloth.

  2. Set aside for use.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour during the initial gentle cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the stock, deepening its flavour as they cook down.
Onions
Provide sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and brown slowly in butter.
Dried peas
Release starch and body into the simmering liquid, giving the consommé more substance.
White haricots
Contribute starch and body to the liquid during the long simmer.
Lettuces
Add a mild, fresh vegetable flavour to the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the mixture turns red. Slow, gentle cooking draws out sweetness and colour without scorching the butter and vegetables, which would make the stock bitter and cloudy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter. 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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