Name: A Clear Broth
Ingredients: 1 mouse-round of beef; 1 knuckle-bone of veal; a few shanks of mutton; water

Why it works: Beef and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Clear Broth

Ingredients

1 mouse-round of beef
1 knuckle-bone of veal
a few shanks of mutton
water

Directions

Prepare

Place the beef, veal, and mutton in a deep pan.
Cover tightly with a lid or coarse crust.
Add enough water to cover the meat.

Cook and store

Bake until the beef is cooked through.
Let it cool, then store in a cool place.

Serve

When ready to serve, add desired flavoring.

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.

Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Veal + muttontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,394 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Provides the main meat flavour and body to the broth as it cooks slowly.
Veal knuckle-bone: Adds gelatine from bone and connective tissue, giving the broth body and richness.
Mutton: Adds meaty flavour and additional savoury depth to the broth.

“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.