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Beef Broth

A hearty broth made with beef, root vegetables, barley, and butter, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef Broth

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, fry the diced onion, carrot, turnip, parsnip, and celery in butter until browned.

  2. Add the small pieces of beef and fry until browned.

Simmer and serve

  1. Stir in the washed barley, season with salt and pepper, and add the water.

  2. Boil for two hours.

  3. Brown small squares of bread in the oven and serve with the broth.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  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. 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

Rump of beef
Browning in the pot builds savory flavor, and long simmering makes the meat tender.
Onion, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery
Frying in butter browns the vegetables and adds sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Barley
Releases starch as it cooks, giving the broth body and a slightly thicker texture.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables and beef. Browning creates deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flatter, less savory broth, so the pieces should take on color before the water goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, butter, beef, barley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, butter, beef, barley. 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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