Name: Clear Light Broth, or First Stock
Ingredients: 16 pounds trimmings of veal, beef, lamb, or mutton; 6 large onions; 2 carrots; 2 turnips; 2 heads of celery; 1 quart water; 1 bunch parsley; 1 bunch thyme; 2 bay leaves

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Clear Light Broth, or First Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut up the meat trimmings into small pieces.

Make the broth

In a large stewpan, combine the meat, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, and water.
Place the stewpan over high heat, cover, and cook until a light white film forms on the bottom, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
Once boiling, reduce heat and add parsley, thyme, and bay leaves.
Let it simmer for 3 hours, skimming off any impurities as needed.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal, beef, lamb, or mutton trimmings: Provides the meaty flavor and gelatin-rich connective tissue that gives the broth body.
Onions: Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook down into the broth.
Carrots: Contribute gentle sweetness and aromatic flavor to the broth.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and earthy aroma to the flavor base.
Celery: Adds aromatic, herbal flavor that rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the broth at a gentle simmer and skim it. Vigorous boiling churns fat and proteins into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer lets impurities rise so they can be skimmed off, keeping the broth clear.

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme. 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.

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Cream of Celery Soup113 recipes

Veal Patties50 recipes

Turnip Soup43 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Clear Light Broth, or First Stock