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Winter Vegetable Soup and Bouilli

A hearty beef and vegetable soup simmered for hours, thickened with flour and flavored with various ketchups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Winter Vegetable Soup and Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large pot with cold water and salt. Use a wire trivet to prevent burning.

  2. Simmer gently until scum rises, then skim carefully and add another quart of cold water.

  3. Once more scum rises, skim it off to ensure a clear soup.

  4. Add the browned onions, carrots, turnips, celery, bay leaves, peppercorns, cloves, garlic, sweet herbs, and mushroom.

  5. Simmer with the lid on for 4 hours.

  6. Remove the meat and skim off the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the vegetables from the broth.

  2. Beat the vegetables into a pulp with a wooden spoon and return them to the broth.

  3. Thicken the soup with flour mixed with a cup of the soup and add the ketchups.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil and serve with the vegetables in a tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 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 top rump
Gives rich meaty flavour and body to the broth as it simmers for hours.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth when browned first.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth and pulp.
Turnips
Add earthy flavour and, once beaten to a pulp, body to the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic savoury flavour to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it becomes lightly body-rich rather than watery.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum rising during the early simmer contains coagulated proteins and impurities; removing it promptly keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, garlic, marjoram):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, garlic, marjoram. 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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