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Common Broth Maigre

A broth made from dried peas, fish, and root vegetables, simmered for hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Common Broth Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea stock

  1. Boil the dried peas with water, salt, butter, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley for 4 hours.

  2. After boiling, strain the stock through a silk sieve.

Build the broth

  1. In a separate pan, slice and sweat the carrots, turnips, onions, and celery in butter until evenly colored.

  2. Add the cut whitings, sliced leeks, 10 quarts of water, and the strained stock from the peas.

  3. Boil for 3 hours and then strain again through a silk sieve.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peas
Break down during long boiling to thicken the stock and give it body.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown evenly while sweating.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma as they soften and colour in butter.
Onions
Build savoury depth and browning flavour when sweated in butter.
Whitings
Release savoury flavour and gelatin into the broth during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Sweat the vegetables until evenly colored. Gentle browning in butter builds caramelised, savoury flavour that carries into the broth. Pale or uneven colour leaves the broth flat, and scorched pieces add bitterness.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, carrot, turnip, onion):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, carrot, turnip, 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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