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A beef broth flavored with herbs, spices, and forcemeat balls, thickened with a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and white wine work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 134 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl decanoate, which smells grape, waxy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the beef into several pieces.

  2. Boil the beef with sliced carrots and onions until the meat is tender, adding hot water as needed.

  3. Half an hour before cooking is complete, add burnt onion, parsley, bay leaves, celery, lemon peel, thyme, marjoram, sweet basil, salt, cloves, and pepper.

  4. Strain the mixture through a colander and set the stock aside to cool, allowing fat to rise and sediment to settle.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a pan, melt butter. Gradually stir in flour, mixing with some stock until smooth.

  2. Strain out any knots.

  3. Add the thickening to the stock while stirring, and let it boil together.

  4. Add forcemeat balls, lemon juice, and wine to the mixture. Include bits of soup meat as 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Marjoram + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  2. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-filled broth when cooked with butter.
Butter
Forms a roux with the flour, helping the thickening blend smoothly into the stock.
Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the stock during long simmering, giving body and richness.
White wine or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished broth.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the rich broth.

The step that matters

Adding the thickening to the stock. Flour clumps if it goes into hot liquid undispersed. Mixing it smooth with cool stock first, then stirring it in while the stock moves, lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken without lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsley, celery, lemon, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsley, celery, lemon, thyme, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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