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Vegetable Broth

A broth made from boiled carrot, onion, and potato, flavored with nut cream or oil and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Broth

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrot, onion, and potato.

  2. Cut the boiled vegetables into pieces.

  3. Place the pieces on oiled baking sheets.

  4. Brush the pieces with nut cream or nut oil.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

Make the broth

  1. Transfer the browned pieces to a saucepan.

  2. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve or colander.

  4. Return the strained liquid to the kettle.

  5. Add salt and nut cream if desired.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  4. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it softens and browns.
Onion
Browning in the oven builds savoury depth and aroma in the broth.
Potato
Its starch thickens the liquid slightly and gives the broth more body.
Nut oil
Carries heat to the vegetables and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Browning drives the Maillard reaction, which creates the deep, roasted flavour of the broth. Pale vegetables give a flat, boiled taste, so colour should be visible before moving on.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, potato, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, cream. 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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