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Soup

Grand Bouillon

A clear beef stock made with beef, trimmings, poultry bones, vegetables, and salt, simmered slowly and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Grand Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the beef and meat trimmings in a large pot.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat.

  3. Put the pot on a moderate fire.

Simmer and skim

  1. Skim the surface carefully, adding a little cold water each time until the stock is clear.

  2. Season with salt, turnips, carrots, onions, and leeks.

  3. Let it simmer slowly until the meat is cooked.

Finish

  1. Transfer the cooked meat to a stewpan. Pour some stock over it.

  2. Strain the stock through a wet cloth to prepare for soups and sauces.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Gives the stock its meaty flavour as it simmers slowly in the water.
Bones
Release gelatin and body into the liquid, giving the stock richness and mouthfeel.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as they cook.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and colour to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface. Gentle skimming removes proteins and fat that cloud the liquid. Adding a little cold water makes these particles rise and coagulate so they can be lifted off, leaving a clearer stock.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, veal, mutton, lamb, carrot, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, veal, mutton, lamb, carrot, onion. 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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