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Souse

A flavorful vegetable broth made with butter, carrots, onions, water, vinegar, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Souse

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and onions; stir occasionally until they begin to brown.

  3. Pour in the warm water and vinegar.

  4. Add garlic, parsley, thyme, clove, bay leaf, peppercorns, nutmeg, and salt.

  5. Simmer for about 1 hour.

  6. Strain the mixture, and it is ready for use.

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

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Onions
Browning in butter adds savory, deeper flavor to the broth.
Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the liquid as they simmer.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the broth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps draw flavor out of the vegetables and herbs.

The step that matters

Browning the carrots and onions. Stirring until they just begin to brown builds deeper flavor through browning reactions. Pale vegetables make a flatter, less savory broth, while over-darkened ones can taste bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, vinegar, garlic, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, vinegar, garlic, parsley, thyme. 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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