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Soup

Broth for an Invalid

A simple broth made from chicken, veal, mutton, and beef simmered in water with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Broth for an Invalid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a jar with a cover.

  3. Fill the jar with water and add a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Seal the jar tightly and let it simmer all day on the stove.

Finish

  1. Strain the broth and season to taste.

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. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Chicken + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Its protein and collagen release into the water, giving the broth body and savour.
Veal
Gelatin from its connective tissue gives the broth a light, silky body.
Mutton
Adds rich, savoury flavour and extra body as its fat and connective tissue melt.
Beef
Contributes deep meaty flavour and gelatin that thickens the finished broth.

The step that matters

Seal the jar and simmer gently. A tight seal keeps moisture in so the broth does not reduce, and a slow simmer extracts flavour and gelatin without making the liquid cloudy.

“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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