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Soup

Broth Maigre

A simple vegetable broth made with onions, potatoes, carrots, turnip, rice, and dripping, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broth Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with the dripping.

  3. Fry until soft and browned.

Simmer

  1. Add the cold water, sliced carrot, turnip, and potatoes, along with the washed rice.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Add more boiling water if needed.

  4. Continue boiling until all vegetables are soft and pulpy.

  5. Stir until the soup is thick and uniform.

  6. Optionally, pass through a sieve or colander.

  7. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  8. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened and browned in dripping, they build the savoury, aromatic base of the broth.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, helping thicken the broth.
Potatoes
Break down as they cook, adding body and thickness to the soup.
Dripping
Fat that carries flavour and helps brown the onions.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until soft and browned. Browning the onions in fat develops deeper, sweeter flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions leave the broth tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, rice, carrot, turnip, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, rice, carrot, turnip, pepper. 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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