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Soup

Quick Bouillon

A quick broth made with butter, beef, chicken bones, vegetables, and an egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Quick Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the sliced onion.

  2. Cook until the onion is thoroughly done.

  3. Add the chopped beef, broken chicken bones, celery, cloves, carrot, bay leaf, parsley, and cold water.

  4. Cover the saucepan and place it on the back of the stove to slowly heat.

  5. Let it come to a boil, then strain and return the liquid to the saucepan.

  6. Bring the strained liquid to a boil again.

Clarify and strain

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the white of one egg with ½ cup of water until blended.

  2. Crush the eggshell and add it to the egg mixture.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling bouillon and boil for four minutes.

  4. Let it stand for one minute to settle.

  5. Strain through cheesecloth wrung out of cold water.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Releases flavor and savory body into the stock as it simmers.
Chicken bones
Add gelatin and rich flavor to the stock as they simmer.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate and trap cloudy particles so they can be strained out, clarifying the broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth once cooked down in butter.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the boiling bouillon. The egg white must be fully blended and added to a boiling liquid so it coagulates and clings to impurities. If the broth is not boiling, the white will not set properly and clarity will suffer.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, onion, celery, chicken, carrot, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, onion, celery, chicken, carrot, parsley. 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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