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German Veal Broth

A clear broth made from veal knuckle, water, vegetables, herbs, and finished with vermicelli, parsley, nutmeg, egg yolk, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

German Veal Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the veal into pieces.

  2. Cook the veal in 3 quarts of water with the carrot, onion, clove, salt, pepper, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Simmer for 4 hours.

  4. Cool, skim, and strain the stock.

Finish the broth

  1. Add the cooked vermicelli, chopped parsley, nutmeg, and the egg yolk blended with milk to 1½ quarts of the stock.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Releases gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the broth and thickens it slightly when combined with milk.
Milk
Blends with the egg yolk to add richness and smooth the finished broth.

The step that matters

Simmer for 4 hours. A long, gentle simmer below a boil extracts gelatin and flavour from the veal bones and joints, while a rolling boil can cloud the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, clove, pepper, parsley, thyme, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, clove, pepper, parsley, thyme, nutmeg. 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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