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Bouillon Rafraichissant De Poulet

A chicken broth with pearl barley, coriander, carrot, turnip, lettuce, and borage leaves, served lukewarm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon Rafraichissant De Poulet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the cut-up fowl, pearl barley, coriander seed, and water.

  2. Skim the surface and bring to a gentle boil for 3 hours.

  3. Add the sliced carrot, turnip, lettuce, and borage leaves.

Infuse and serve

  1. Cover and remove from heat, letting it infuse for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve and serve lukewarm.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + boragetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + boragetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 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

Young fowl
Provides the meat and flavour that give the broth its body and savoury character.
Pearl barley
Releases starch as it simmers, thickening the broth and adding a soft, slightly chewy texture.
Coriander seed
Adds a warm, citrusy aroma to the broth.
Carrot
Contributes gentle sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming and gentle boiling. Bringing the broth to a gentle boil rather than a hard one keeps it clear, since vigorous boiling emulsifies fat and proteins into a cloudy liquid. Skimming the foam removes impurities that would otherwise cloud and taint the broth during the long simmer.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, carrot, turnip, lettuce, borage):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, carrot, turnip, lettuce, borage. 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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