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Grand Bouillon

A clear beef and mixed meat stock flavored with turnips, carrots, onions, cloves, and leeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Grand Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the beef and meat trimmings in a large pot.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat and put it on a moderate fire.

Make the stock

  1. Skim the surface carefully, adding a little cold water each time until the stock is clear.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, turnips, carrots, onions (one with cloves), and leeks.

  3. Let the mixture simmer slowly until the meat is cooked.

Finish

  1. If serving the meat, transfer it to a stewpan and pour some stock over it.

  2. Strain the stock through a wet cloth to prepare it for soups and sauces.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water as it simmers, giving the stock body.
Bones and trimmings
Release collagen and minerals during long simmering, thickening the stock and deepening its flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and release their flavor into the liquid.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and aromatic flavor to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface. Fat and foam rise to the top as the liquid heats. Skimming them carefully, and adding a little cold water, helps them separate so the stock stays clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, mutton, lamb, turnip, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, mutton, lamb, turnip, carrot, 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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