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A savory broth made by simmering beef or veal broth with aromatics for four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and meat) and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt, onion, herbs, celery, carrot, mace, and peppercorns.

  3. For added flavor, include mushroom buttons and bones if desired.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 4 hours.

Strain and cool

  1. Strain the gravy and let it cool to remove fat.

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

Beef or veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavor of the finished broth.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it simmers slowly in the liquid.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, vegetal flavor to the simmering liquid.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the simmering liquid.
Mushroom buttons
Add savory, umami depth to the broth when included.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil. A gentle simmer extracts flavor slowly while keeping the broth clear. A hard boil makes it cloudy and can emulsify fat into the liquid, which makes it harder to skim and cool off.

Swap the mace

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

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

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