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Consomme Solferino

Consommé with small boiled vegetable balls of potato, carrot, and turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Solferino

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and peel the potato, carrot, and turnip.

  2. Scoop the vegetables into balls slightly larger than a pea using a vegetable scoop.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil each type of vegetable separately in clear stock or salted water.

  2. Serve the boiled vegetables in the consomme.

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

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

  3. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato
Holds its shape when boiled, giving firm bite-sized pieces in the clear soup.
Carrot
Adds firm texture and mild sweetness as a boiled garnish in the consomme.
Turnip
Adds firm texture and a mild, slightly peppery flavour as a boiled garnish.
Consomme
Forms the clear, flavourful broth that the boiled vegetables are served in.

The step that matters

Boil each type of vegetable separately. Vegetables cook at different rates, so boiling them separately lets each reach tender-firm texture without some becoming mushy while others stay hard. Cooking them in clear stock or salted water also keeps the consomme clear.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip. 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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