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Broth with Fowl

A hearty beef broth with barley, turnips, carrots, onion, and sweet herbs, served with beef and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Broth with Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef and water in a large pot.

  2. Skim well and boil gently for 1 hour.

  3. Add the barley, onion, sweet herbs, turnips, and carrots.

  4. Boil softly until the broth is flavorful.

  5. Remove the onion and herbs before serving.

  6. Season with coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with the beef in the center, surrounded by turnips and carrots.

  2. Pour the broth over all.

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. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + carrottop 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

Thick flank beef
Provides the main meat and rich, beefy flavor as it simmers in the broth.
Barley
Softens as it cooks and thickens the broth slightly, adding body and chew.
Turnips
Add mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavor and tender texture after simmering.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and soft texture to the broth and serving.

The step that matters

Skim well before the gentle boil. Skimming removes foam and coagulated proteins that would otherwise cloud the broth and add off flavors. Keeping the boil gentle prevents the meat from toughening and the broth from becoming cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, barley, turnip, carrot. 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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