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Grand Bouillon

A clear beef stock made with beef, other meats, poultry bones, vegetables, and salt, simmered slowly and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Grand Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the beef and any other meat dressings in a large pot with enough water to not fill the pot completely.

  2. Place the pot over moderate heat and skim the surface carefully.

  3. Add a little cold water each time you skim until the stock is clear.

Simmer

  1. Season the stock with salt, turnips, carrots, onions (one with cloves), and leeks.

  2. Let the mixture simmer slowly until the meat is cooked.

  3. If serving the meat, transfer it to a stewpan and pour some stock over it.

Strain

  1. Wet and wring a cloth.

  2. Strain the stock through the cloth for use in soups and sauces.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Beef
Releases gelatin and flavor into the liquid, giving the stock body and savoriness.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook slowly in the stock.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and aroma to the stock's flavor.
Leeks
Add a mild, savory onion-like aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that would otherwise cloud the stock and make it greasy. Adding cold water helps those impurities rise and separate, leaving a clear result.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, veal, mutton, lamb, carrot, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, veal, mutton, lamb, carrot, onion. 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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