Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Simple Broth
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chop the meat finely and place it in a saucepan.
Pour the boiling water over the meat.
Make the broth
Bring to a boil, then add salt and the toasted bread.
Boil rapidly for 20-25 minutes, stirring off the scum as it rises.
Strain the broth through a sieve and serve with small squares of toasted bread.
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.
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Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,924 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lean tender meat
- Releases flavor and body into the water as it simmers, forming the broth.
- Boiling water
- Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor and gelatin from the meat.
- Toasted bread
- Adds a light toasted aroma and a little body to the broth.
The step that matters
Stirring off the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise during boiling. Removing it as it forms keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.
“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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