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Bouillon of Beef

A clear beef broth made with brisket, root vegetables, cabbage sprouts, and herbs, finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon of Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef and vegetables

  1. Cover the beef with water.

  2. Cook the beef slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Cut the vegetables into long strips. Leave the cabbage sprouts whole.

  4. Cook the vegetables in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.

  5. Discard the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Skim the soup.

  2. Add the vegetables to the soup.

  3. Stew everything slowly for 2 more hours without boiling.

  4. Remove the beef from the soup.

  5. Take half the vegetables from the pot. Keep the half of the vegetables hot.

  6. Rub the remaining vegetables through a colander.

  7. Season the soup and pulp.

  8. Add the herbs.

  9. Boil sharply for 5 minutes.

  10. Stir in butter and flour.

  11. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Brown the beef and serve

  1. Place the beef in a dripping pan.

  2. Pour 1 cup of strained soup seasoned with pepper, salt, and mustard over the beef.

  3. Dredge the beef thickly with flour.

  4. Brown the beef in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting every few minutes.

  5. Serve the soup in a tureen.

  6. Arrange the reserved vegetables around the beef.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef brisket or round
Provides the rich meat flavor and gelatin that give the broth body.
Butter and flour
Stirred in at the end to enrich and slightly thicken the soup.
Turnips
Contribute sweetness and body to the soup as they cook down.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the soup.

The step that matters

Brown the beef in the oven. Dredging with flour and browning at high heat creates a crust through the Maillard reaction, while frequent basting keeps the surface moist so it browns rather than dries out.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, onion, butter, flour, mustard):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, onion, butter, flour, mustard. 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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