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Soup

Iced Tomato Bouillon

A chilled tomato-based beef broth with ham, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Iced Tomato Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wipe the meat.

  2. Cut the meat into 1-inch cubes.

  3. Put half of the meat in a kettle with the marrow-bone, water, and tomatoes.

  4. Brown the remaining meat in a hot frying pan with some marrow from the bone.

  5. Add the browned meat to the kettle.

Simmer the soup

  1. Heat the contents slowly to boiling.

  2. Cook just below boiling for five hours.

  3. Cook ham and vegetables in butter for five minutes.

  4. Add the ham and vegetables to the soup with peppercorns, salt, parsley, and bay leaf.

  5. Cook for an additional one and a half hours.

Clarify and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Cool quickly.

  3. Remove fat.

  4. Clear the soup.

  5. Chill in the refrigerator.

  6. Serve in bouillon cups.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat flavor and body as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Marrow-bone
Adds rich gelatin and savory flavor to the broth during long simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a bright tomato flavor that balances the rich beef.
Butter
Carries flavor when the ham and vegetables are cooked before joining the soup.

The step that matters

Cool quickly. Cooling the strained soup fast limits bacterial growth and keeps the broth fresh-tasting. It also lets fat solidify on top so it can be removed cleanly before chilling.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, parsley, ham, carrot, turnip, onion. 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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