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Soupe Au Bouillon

A hearty beef broth soup with vegetables and crisp bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Soupe Au Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine 4 pounds of beef and 4 quarts of water.

  2. Bring to a simmer and skim off any scum that rises.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add coarse sea salt, 1 root of celery, 2 carrots, 2 turnips, and 10 onions.

  2. Let it stew slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Add crisp bread to the soup and let it cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Serve the soup hot, with the beef on a separate dish 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Releases flavour and body into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they soften during stewing.
Crisp bread
Soaks up broth and thickens the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Skimming the simmer. Scum that rises when the broth first comes to a simmer contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, carrot, turnip, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, carrot, turnip, 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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