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Bouillon or Clear Soup

A clear veal soup made with shin, round steak, vegetables, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bouillon or Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Wash all ingredients.

  2. Make a strong stock.

  3. Refrigerate the stock overnight.

  4. Remove fat from the stock in the morning.

  5. Remove all fat from the meat before chopping.

Prepare the soup

  1. Chop celery, pepper, onions, carrots, and turnips finely.

  2. Chop the meat (do not grind).

  3. Add the chopped meat to the vegetables.

  4. Crack eggs into the mixture without removing shells.

  5. Add cloves, bay leaves, salt, paprika, and black pepper, and stir thoroughly.

  6. Add 2 to 3 quarts of stock.

  7. Bring to a slow boil.

Color and strain

  1. In a small frying pan, brown the sugar until deep brown.

  2. Add enough browned sugar to the soup for color.

  3. Strain the soup through a cloth-lined sieve.

  4. Ladle carefully from the kettle.

  5. Do not remove the pot from the stove while straining.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let it simmer slowly.

  2. Serve hot.

  3. Adjust pepper and salt to taste.

  4. Let vegetables cook in stock for at least 3 hours.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal shin
Its collagen breaks down into gelatin, giving the stock body and richness.
Round steak
Its chopped lean meat gathers fine particles as the stock simmers, helping clarify it.
Eggs
Their proteins set and trap fine particles, helping clarify the soup.
Onions
Their sugars and aromatic compounds build savory, mildly sweet flavor as they simmer.
Carrots
Their natural sugars add mild sweetness and body to the broth.
Brown sugar
Caramelized, it deepens the soup's color.

The step that matters

Keep the soup at a slow simmer, not a rolling boil. Vigorous boiling churns the egg and meat raft that traps particles, breaking it up and leaving the soup cloudy. A gentle simmer lets the raft collect impurities so the broth stays clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, parsley, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, parsley, carrot, turnip, clove, 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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