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Le Grand Bouillon

A large beef broth made by simmering beef, bones, vegetables, and salt for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Le Grand Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the beef and parures in a large pot with cold water.

  2. Heat the pot and skim off the black scum as it forms.

  3. Add a little cold water to raise the white scum for easier skimming.

Simmer

  1. Add the carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions (one onion should be stuck with cloves).

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt and let the mixture simmer for 5 hours.

Strain

  1. Strain the broth through a cloth or double silk sieve.

  2. If available, place the beef in some braising liquid to enhance its flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and gelatin that give the broth body.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they cook slowly in the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Skimming off the black and white scum as it rises keeps the broth clear and free of impurities, since scum that is left to cook back into the liquid makes it cloudy and muddy in flavour.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, celery, leek, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, leek, onion. 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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