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Soup

Hot Bouillon

A beef broth made by simmering lean beef with vegetables and seasonings for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hot Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef, cold water, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley, salt, white pepper, and peppercorns.

  2. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the broth and set aside to cool.

  4. Once cooled, remove any fat that has accumulated on the surface.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, reheat the bouillon and strain it through a fine strainer.

  2. Optionally, add a poached egg to each individual bowl of soup.

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

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Cold water
Extracts flavor and gelatin from the beef slowly as it heats.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after bringing to a boil. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, since a hard rolling boil emulsifies fat and cloudies the liquid.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley. 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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