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Soup

Broths and Soups

A clear poultry broth simmered with carrots, turnips, leeks, celery, onion, and optional vegetables, served with crusty bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Broths and Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the meat in a pot with cold water and add salt.

  2. Heat gently, ensuring it does not boil rapidly.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  4. When the meat is about two-thirds cooked, add the carrots, turnips, leeks, celery, peppercorns, onion, parsnip, and garlic if using.

  5. Continue to simmer for 3 to 5 hours until the broth is clear and golden brown.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the broth through a colander into a soup tureen.

  2. Serve with slices of crusty bread soaked in the 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Poultry or giblets
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water as it simmers slowly, giving the broth body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished broth.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like sweetness and savoury aroma.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour that rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle and skim the scum. A rapid boil churns fat and proteins into the liquid, making the broth cloudy and greasy. Gentle simmering and skimming keep it clear.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, clove, parsnip):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, clove, parsnip. 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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