Skip to main content
Main

Grand Bouillon

A clear beef and poultry broth made by simmering meat scraps, vegetables, and herbs for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Grand Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef, meat scraps, and poultry carcasses.

  2. Add turnips, carrots, onions, garlic, cloves, pot herbs, and salt.

  3. Fill the pot with water, leaving some space at the top, and place it over low heat.

Simmer and strain

  1. Skim the surface gently and add cold water as needed until the broth is clear.

  2. Let it simmer for several hours.

  3. Strain the broth through a hot, damp cloth and store it in a cool place.

Use the broth

  1. When using for stews, add wine, ketchup, or soy sauce to taste.

  2. Brown the ingredients in a casserole with butter before adding to the broth.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the broth its main meaty flavour and body as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a rounded flavour to the broth.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour to the broth.
Poultry carcasses
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface. Skimming gently removes foam and coagulated proteins that would otherwise cloud the broth. Adding cold water helps those impurities rise and separate, so the liquid stays clear rather than greasy or murky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, veal, mutton, turnip, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, veal, mutton, turnip, carrot, onion. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes