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Iced Boullion

A chilled beef broth made from simmered beef, vegetables, and spices, served cold with optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Iced Boullion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Whip and chop the beef finely.

  2. Add the beef and cold water to a pot and let it stand in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

  3. Heat the mixture slowly, skim off any foam, and simmer for 4 hours.

  4. Add the onions, carrots, soup greens, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  5. Simmer for an additional hour, then strain and cool the broth.

Chill and finish

  1. Once chilled, remove all grease and pour off the clear liquid.

  2. If the broth is cloudy, clarify it.

  3. Adjust salt to taste and deepen the color with caramel if desired.

  4. Serve icy cold, adding 1 tablespoon of sherry to each pint.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meaty flavor and body that the broth is built on.
Cold water
Extracts flavor from the beef slowly, producing a clear rather than cloudy liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook down into the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the simmered broth.
Caramel
Deepens the broth's color without changing its basic flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture slowly and skim off the foam. Bringing the beef and water up to heat gradually and removing the foam as it forms keeps the broth clear. Rapid boiling churns fine particles and fat into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, clove, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, clove, sherry. 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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