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First Broth

A simple beef broth made with shin or neck, water, carrots, onion, celery, savory herbs, mace, peppercorns, cloves, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

First Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef and water.

  2. Add the carrots, onion, celery, savory herbs, mace, peppercorns, cloves, and salt.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 hours or more.

  4. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or neck
Collagen in the connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the broth body and a rich mouthfeel.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during simmering, adding gentle sweetness and depth to the broth.
Onion
Contributes savory, sweet aromatic compounds that build the broth's background flavor.
Celery
Adds fresh, vegetal aromatics that round out the broth's flavor.
Peppercorns
Release piperine and aromatic oils slowly, adding a warm, spicy aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer lets collagen and flavor leach out slowly while keeping the broth clear. A hard boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, celery, clove. 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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