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Soup Stock A, LA Minute

A quick beef and vegetable stock made by simmering sliced beef, carrots, onions, celery, turnip, and cloves in water, then strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 184 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup Stock A, LA Minute

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Mix the beef, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, and cloves in a saucepan.

  2. Pour the water over the mixture.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and skim off any foam.

  6. Strain the stock through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Place thin slices of stale bread in a tureen.

  2. Pour the stock over the bread.

  3. Sprinkle chopped chervil on top, if desired.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + cherviltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raw beef
Releases flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot stock, giving the soup a soft, substantial texture.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam from the simmering beef and vegetables contains impurities that cloud the stock and taste bitter. Removing it after boiling keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the chervil

The recipe marks chervil as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, clove, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Chervilthe original

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