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Consomme Vegetal

A clear vegetable broth made with carrots, turnip, leek, onions, rice, barley, and egg, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Consomme Vegetal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the carrots, turnip, leek, onions, rice, barley, oil, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 45 minutes.

  3. Add more water if needed and allow to simmer.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, break the egg and remove the germ.

  2. Pour the hot broth over the egg.

  3. Once the egg white is cooked, stir the yolk to mix with the broth.

  4. If desired, sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

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

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

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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

Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften and release their flavour.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Rice
Releases starch that gives the broth a slightly fuller body.
Barley
Releases starch that thickens the broth and adds a mild, nutty flavour.
Egg
Its white cooks in the hot broth, clarifying it and adding richness with the yolk.

The step that matters

Adding the hot broth to the egg. Pour the broth over the egg slowly and let the white set in the heat. Stirring too early or using broth that is not hot enough leaves the egg cloudy or raw.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, onion, rice, barley, egg):

  1. Celeryfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, onion, rice, barley, egg. 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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