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Leg Op Beep Broth

A broth made by simmering a leg of beef with water, mace, bread, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Leg Op Beep Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Break the bone of the leg of beef in several places.

  2. Place the beef in a pan with 1 gallon of water.

  3. Remove the scum as it rises.

  4. Add 3 blades of mace, a crust of bread, and a small pinch of parsley.

  5. Boil until the beef is tender.

Serve

  1. Toast some bread and cut it into diamond shapes.

  2. Lay the toasted bread in the bottom of a tureen.

  3. Place the meat on top of the bread and pour the broth over everything.

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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mace + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef
Provides meat and bone that release flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the beef.
Bread crust
Adds a little starch and body to the broth and absorbs some of the scum.
Bread for toasting
Toasted pieces hold their crispness in the tureen and soak up broth at the base of the dish.

The step that matters

Remove the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities; skimming it as it forms keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, parsley. 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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