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Consomme Vegetal

A clear vegetable broth made with carrots, turnip, leek, onions, rice, barley, and egg, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme Vegetal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the carrots, turnip, leek, onions, rice, barley, oil, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 45 minutes.

  3. Add more water if needed and allow to simmer.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, break the egg and remove the germ.

  2. Pour the hot broth over the egg.

  3. Once the egg white is cooked, stir the yolk to mix with the broth.

  4. Garnish with fresh parsley 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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

Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Onions
Build savory depth and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Rice
Releases starch that gives the broth a slightly thicker, smoother body.
Barley
Contributes starch and a mild, nutty flavor that thickens the broth slightly.
Egg
Cooks in the hot broth, adding richness and a silky texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot broth over the egg. The broth must be hot enough to cook the egg white, but the yolk should stay soft enough to stir in smoothly. Pouring slowly and waiting for the white to set helps avoid a rubbery texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, rice, barley, egg, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, rice, barley, egg, 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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