Skip to main content
Main

Soupe Au Bouillon

A beef broth soup with celery, carrots, turnips, onions, and crisped bread.

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

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Soupe Au Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine 4 pounds of beef and 4 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a simmer and let it stew slowly until scum rises.

  3. Skim off the scum, then add salt, celery, carrots, turnips, and onions.

  4. Let it stew slowly for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Crisp the bread in the oven, then add it to the soup for 30 minutes before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Beef
Gives the broth its main meaty flavor and body as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth during slow simmering.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the simmered broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the broth heats. Removing it before adding vegetables keeps the broth clearer and cleaner in flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, carrot, turnip, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, carrot, turnip, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes