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Bouillon, or Beef Broth with Eggs

A beef broth enriched with eggs, parsley, chives, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon, or Beef Broth with Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place 1 lb of beef and bones in 1 quart of water to prepare a stock.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt and bring to a gentle boil, skimming off the scum.

  3. Add the cleaned soup vegetables, peppercorns, and bay leaves.

  4. Cook gently for 2.5 to 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Beat 1 to 2 eggs in a soup tureen and mix in the chopped parsley and chives.

  2. Pour in some strained stock and season with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Serve with 1 egg for every quart of 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers with the bones.
Eggs
Added raw to the hot broth, they lightly set and give the soup a silky, enriched texture.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as it cooks.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma that round out the stock's flavour.
Leek
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Pouring the stock over the eggs. The broth must be hot enough to lightly cook the beaten eggs, but pouring too slowly or into cool liquid can leave them stringy or unset. Stir the stock in gradually while the eggs are beaten so they cook into fine strands.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, leek, egg, parsley, chive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, leek, egg, parsley, chive. 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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