Skip to main content
Main

A Very Nourishing Veal Broth

A nourishing broth made from veal, fowl, mutton shank bones, mace, peppercorns, onion, bread, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mutton and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,488 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Very Nourishing Veal Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and bruise the mutton shank bones.

  2. Combine the veal, fowl, shank bones, mace, peppercorns, onion, and bread in a large pot.

  3. Add 2 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

Simmer and serve

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for several hours.

  2. Strain the broth and discard solids.

  3. Serve warm, taking half a pint three to four times a day.

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. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Veal + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  4. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle or shoulder
Releases gelatin and collagen into the water, giving the broth body and a rich mouthfeel.
Old fowl
Adds savoury flavour and additional collagen, helping the broth become richer over long simmering.
Mutton shank bones
Contribute marrow, collagen and deep meaty flavour to the broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. Once the broth reaches a boil, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer keeps it from churning and turning cloudy, while still slowly extracting collagen and flavour from the bones and meat over several hours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mutton, onion, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mutton, onion, 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.

More veal broth recipes

with Rice 7 See all 133 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes