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Veal and Tapioca Broth

A veal broth flavored with onion, turnip, mace, celery essence, and pearl tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal and Tapioca Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the veal, bones, sliced onion, sliced turnip, and cold water in a large pot.

  2. Cook slowly for three hours.

  3. Soak the tapioca in a small amount of milk during this time.

Strain and skim

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Press the vegetables through a colander.

  3. Cool the soup to remove the fat, then skim off the fat.

Finish the broth

  1. Season with pepper and salt.

  2. Reheat the soup.

  3. Add the soaked tapioca and stir until the tapioca melts.

  4. Simmer for half an hour.

  5. Add the essence of celery, then serve.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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

Veal
Slow cooking draws collagen out of the meat and bones, giving the broth body and depth.
Pearl tapioca
Its starch swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it a soft, silky texture.
Onion
Slow cooking releases its sweetness and savoury flavour into the broth base.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the tapioca until it melts. Tapioca thickens only when its starch fully swells and gelatinises in hot liquid. If it is not simmered long enough, it stays opaque and grainy and does not give the broth its smooth body.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, turnip, celery, pepper, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, turnip, celery, pepper, milk. 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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