Skip to main content
Main

White Broth

A clear veal broth made with salt pork, suet, carrot, onion, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, flour, white wine, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

White Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, brown the salt pork, suet, carrot, onion, herbs, peppercorns, and cloves for 4 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and stir well.

  3. Pour in the white wine and add the knuckle of veal.

  4. Add the water and bring to a simmer.

  5. Simmer for 3 hours, then strain 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat that browns the vegetables and adds savory depth to the broth.
Suet
Adds rich fat that carries flavor through the long simmer.
Flour
Stirred into the browned fat to begin thickening the broth.
White wine
Adds acidity that helps lift and balance the flavors of the broth.
Knuckle of veal
Releases gelatin and collagen during simmering, giving the broth body.

The step that matters

Simmer for 3 hours, then strain. A gentle simmer, not a rolling boil, keeps the broth clear while collagen and gelatin slowly release from the veal. Straining afterward removes solids so the liquid stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, thyme, parsley, shallot, clove, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, thyme, parsley, shallot, clove, flour. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes