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Broth Maigre

A clear vegetable broth with onions, potatoes, carrots, turnip, rice, and dripping, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Place sliced onions in a stew pan with the dripping and fry until soft and browned.

Make the soup

  1. Add the cold water, sliced carrot, turnip, and potatoes, along with the washed rice.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, adding more boiling water if needed.

  3. Continue boiling until all vegetables are soft and pulpy, stirring until the soup thickens.

  4. For a smoother texture, pass the mixture through a sieve or colander.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and serve hot.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, helping thicken the broth and give it body.
Onions
Fry down to build sweetness and savoury browned flavour in the base.
Potatoes
Break down during boiling, adding starch and body to the soup.
Dripping
Fat that carries the onion flavour and helps it brown during frying.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until all vegetables are soft and pulpy. Vegetables must cook fully so their starch and fibre break down and thicken the broth; undercooked pieces leave the soup thin and gritty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, rice, carrot, turnip, 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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