Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Beef Broth
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break the bones of the beef in two or three places.
Combine the beef, water, mace, parsley, and bread in a pot.
Cook and strain
Boil until the beef is very tender.
Strain the broth into a tureen.
Serve
Toast some bread, cut it into squares, and serve it on a plate.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,032 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,268 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,588 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,866 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Mace + breadtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,005 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef legs
- Bones and meat release gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering.
- Water
- Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor and gelatin from the beef.
- Bread
- Adds a little body and helps absorb impurities as the broth simmers.
The step that matters
Boil until the beef is very tender. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil yields a clearer broth. Boiling vigorously emulsifies fat and fine particles into the liquid, making it cloudy, while slow cooking lets collagen break down into gelatin for a fuller body.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, bread):
- Marjoramfits better
- Thymefits better
- Pepperfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, bread. 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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