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Modern Cookery

A hearty veal broth made with ham, veal neck, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the broth, salt, onion, herbs, celery, carrot, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 4 hours.

  3. If the meat is in fragments, strain the gravy and let it cool to remove the fat.

Quick method

  1. For a quicker method, heat the meat with ¼ to ½ pint of broth until no blood seeps out.

  2. Moisten the meat with the remaining boiling 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. Carrot + celerytop 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

Veal neck or knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavour into the broth, giving body as it simmers slowly.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth's overall flavour.
Beef or veal broth
Forms the liquid base that the meat and vegetables cook in and flavour.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma to the simmering liquid.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savoury background to the broth.

The step that matters

Gentle simmer for 4 hours. A rolling boil makes the broth cloudy and greasy, while a gentle simmer draws out collagen and flavour slowly and cleanly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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