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Bouillon a L'heure, Ou a LA Minute

A simple beef broth made with beef, carrot, onion, turnip, water, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

Bouillon a L'heure, Ou a LA Minute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the beef into slices.

  2. Place the beef in a stewpan with a little water, chopped carrot, onion, and turnip.

  3. Stew until the meat and vegetables begin to stick to the bottom.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add boiling water and salt, then let it boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Optionally, chop the meat finely and return it to the stewpan with the water and vegetables.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  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

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavor, and its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin that gives the broth body.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma as its sugars release during stewing.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma, especially where it browns slightly on the pot's base.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and a subtle earthy aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat and vegetables begin to stick to the bottom. Gentle browning through Maillard reactions builds savory, roasted depth in the broth. Stewing too long past this point scorches the pot and can leave a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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