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A hearty broth made with veal neck or knuckle, ham, herbs, and vegetables simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine broth (or water), salt, onion, herbs, celery, carrot, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 4 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. If the meat is in fragments, strain the gravy and let it cool to remove fat.

  2. For a quicker method, heat the meat with ¼ to ½ pint of broth until no blood issues from it.

  3. Moisten the meat with the remaining boiling broth.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal neck or knuckle
Its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin during slow simmering, giving the broth body.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth.
Strong beef or veal broth
Supplies most of the liquid and flavour for the whole pot.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness as it cooks slowly in the liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. After bringing the pot to a boil, reducing to a gentle simmer matters. A hard boil churns fat into the liquid, clouding the broth, and toughens the meat as its proteins contract too fast.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, celery, carrot, ham, veal, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, celery, carrot, ham, veal, mushroom. 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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