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Soup

Bouillon.

A hearty beef broth made by simmering beef, vegetables, and herbs for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bouillon.

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 ↓

Bouillon.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cover the beef with cold water in a soup kettle.

  2. Heat slowly to allow the meat to release flavors.

  3. Add salt to the water to help scum rise.

  4. Clear the scum and add carrots, turnips, onions, celery, cloves, parsley, leeks, peppercorns, and soup herbs.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stew gently for 4 to 5 hours until the beef is tender.

  2. Serve the meat on a platter with vegetables if desired.

  3. For better flavor, refrigerate overnight and remove fat before serving.

  4. Strain the soup through a sieve, reheat, and serve with fried or toasted bread.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef leg or shin
Collagen-rich cut that breaks down during long gentle stewing, giving body and tender meat.
Onions
Release sweet, savory flavor into the broth as they simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Celery
Contributes savory, aromatic flavor to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and clear the scum. Bringing the water up gently lets meat proteins coagulate and rise as scum that can be skimmed off, keeping the broth clear. Rapid boiling churns the scum into the liquid and clouds it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, leek):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, leek. 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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