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Quick Bouillon

A clear beef and chicken broth made with butter, onion, celery, carrot, cloves, bay leaf, parsley, and an egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 broth

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and cook the sliced onion until it is soft.

  2. Add the chopped beef, broken chicken bones, celery, cloves, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, and cold water.

  3. Cover the saucepan and place it on low heat until it reaches a boiling point.

  4. Once boiling, strain the mixture and return the liquid to the saucepan.

Clarify and strain

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white with ½ cup of water until blended.

  2. Crush the shell and add it to the mixture.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling bouillon.

  4. Boil for 4 minutes.

  5. Let it stand for 1 minute to settle.

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

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

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

Lean beef
Releases meaty flavor and body into the broth as it simmers.
Chicken
Its bones add body and savory depth to the broth.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated, trapping fine particles so the broth clears.
Onion
Softens and turns sweeter as it cooks, adding savory aroma.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness to the start of the broth.

The step that matters

Add the egg mixture to the boiling bouillon. The egg white must be stirred in evenly while the liquid is boiling so it can coagulate and form a raft that collects cloudy particles. Adding it to cooler liquid or stirring unevenly leaves the broth cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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