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A beef broth flavored with herbs and spices, enriched with forcemeat balls and optional egg balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Broths and Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the shin of beef into several pieces.

  2. Combine the beef, sliced carrots, and onions in a pot.

  3. Cover with hot water and boil until the meat is tender, adding more water as needed.

  4. Add the burnt onion, parsley, bay leaves, celery, lemon peel, thyme, marjoram, basil, salt, cloves, and pepper.

  5. Strain the broth through a colander.

  6. Set the strained broth aside to cool.

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a separate pan. Stir in the flour gradually until smooth.

  2. Mix in some of the broth to keep the mixture free from lumps.

  3. Add the thickened mixture back to the broth, stirring continuously.

  4. Let the mixture boil together well.

  5. Add the forcemeat balls, lemon juice, and white wine to the broth.

Prepare the egg balls

  1. Prepare egg balls by mixing hard egg yolks with one raw yolk and a dust of flour, then roll into marble-sized balls.

  2. Cook the egg balls in boiling water for a couple of minutes before adding them to the soup.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides meat and collagen that become tender and give the broth body and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked in butter and stirred in, giving a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a roux, helping thicken the broth smoothly.
Madeira or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the broth's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the broth. Flour clumps if added without fat or liquid being mixed in gradually. Blending it into melted butter and then a little broth, stirring continuously, keeps the thickener smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsley, celery, lemon, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsley, celery, lemon, thyme, marjoram. 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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