Name: Bouillon De Veau
Ingredients: 1 piece of veal or some of the pluck; 1 quart of water; assorted sweet herbs; 1 onion; 1 clove; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt') to taste; black pepper to taste; some lettuce leaves; chervil

Why it works: Lettuce and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 396 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the veal or pluck in 1 quart of water for 1 hour with sweet herbs, onion, clove, salt, pepper, lettuce leaves, and chervil.
When the meat is done, strain the broth through a fine sieve (tamis) and serve with rice, or serve unstrained with the vegetables.

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.

Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together396 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together486 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Clove + cherviltop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together199 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or pluck: Provides the meat and flavour that give the broth its body and savouriness.
Lettuce leaves: Add a mild, subtly sweet vegetable note to the broth.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it simmers in the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, clove, pepper, lettuce, chervil):

Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, pepper, lettuce, chervil. 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.