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Broth Maigre, or Broth Without Meat

A clear broth made from onions, carrot, turnip, and optional rice or barley, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 Maigre, or Broth Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the onions and brown them in a stewpan with butter or dripping, flour, and salt until soft and brown.

  2. Add 1 quart of cold water, sliced carrot, turnip, and rice or pot-barley if using.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Add 1 quart of boiling water and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in butter or dripping builds the deep, savoury flavour that gives the broth its colour.
Butter or dripping
Fat carries the onion flavour and helps the onions brown.
Flour
Lightly cooked with the onions, it thickens the broth slightly and adds body.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and vegetable flavour as it simmers in the liquid.
Turnip
Contributes earthy flavour and sweetness to the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions must brown deeply, not just soften, because the Maillard reaction and caramelisation create the colour and roasted flavour the broth depends on. Pale onions give a thin, flat result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, turnip, rice, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, turnip, rice, pepper. 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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