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
Scrape or chop the beef very finely.
Clean the vegetables and cut them into small pieces.
Remove all the fat from the stock and place it in a stewpan.
Clarify
Add the scraped meat and vegetables, stirring over heat until just boiling.
Let the soup boil well until clear.
Fix a clean cloth on a soupstand and pour boiling water through it to warm it.
Pour the contents of the stewpan gently onto the cloth and let it run through slowly twice.
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.
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together21,601 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,092 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,606 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
- Scraped meat traps impurities and clarifies the stock as it heats.
- Stock
- Forms the liquid base that is clarified into a clear soup.
- Carrot
- Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the clarified soup.
- Turnip
- Adds mild sweetness and aroma to the clarified soup.
- Onion
- Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the clarified soup.
The step that matters
Let the soup boil well until clear. Heating must be gentle enough that the meat raft forms and holds impurities; a hard rolling boil breaks the raft and leaves the consommé cloudy.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip):
- Parsnipfits better
- Leekfits better
- Beetrootfits about as well
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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