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Consomme

A clear beef consommé made with stock, lean beef, vegetables, herbs, and egg white.

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 ↓

Consomme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the beef and clean the vegetables, cutting them into small pieces.

  2. Remove all fat from the stock and place it in a stewpan.

Clarify

  1. Add the chopped beef, beaten egg white, broken egg shell, and vegetables to the stewpan.

  2. Whisk the mixture over heat until just boiling.

  3. Let it boil well until clear.

Strain

  1. Prepare a clean cloth on a soup stand.

  2. Pour boiling water through the cloth to warm it.

  3. Gently pour the stewpan contents onto the cloth.

  4. Let it strain through slowly twice.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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

Lean beef
Traps impurities as it cooks, leaving the stock clear and clean-tasting.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, binding particles into a raft that clarifies the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour of the consommé.

The step that matters

Let it boil well until clear. Stirring or boiling too hard breaks the egg-white raft apart, so particles stay suspended and the consommé turns cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, carrot, turnip, onion, clove. 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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