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Beef Bouillie

A slow‑cooked beef broth with optional herbs and vegetables, served with the beef and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Bouillie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Tie the beef securely with kitchen twine.

  2. Place the beef in a large pot and cover with water.

Simmer

  1. Bring to a boil, then add a moderate amount of coarse sea salt.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for about 3 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

  3. Add the faggot of sweet herbs if desired.

  4. Add vegetables in the last hour of cooking.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper before serving.

  2. Serve the beef in the soup with vegetables or separately, garnished with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Fresh beef
Provides the main meat and rich, savory flavor as it simmers into the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the soup as they soften during the final hour.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth as they cook.

“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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