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Beef Broth

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Dice the onion, carrot, turnip, parsnip, and celery.

  2. Rinse the barley under cold water.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and fry the diced vegetables until browned.

  2. Add the beef, cut into small pieces, and fry until browned.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, then add the water.

  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Toast 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
Provides the meat flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavor and helps them brown in the pot.
Barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds a mild, nutty texture.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables and beef. Browning creates deeper, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying produces a flatter, less rich broth, so the pan should be hot enough to brown rather than steam the ingredients.

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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