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Bouillon De Veau

A clear broth made by simmering veal with water, herbs, onion, clove, salt, pepper, lettuce leaves, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 396 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bouillon De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the veal and water.

  2. Add the sweet herbs, onion, clove, salt, pepper, lettuce leaves, and chervil.

  3. Stew for 1 hour until the meat is tender.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the broth through a fine sieve if desired, and serve with rice or the vegetables.

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. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Clove + cherviltop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meaty flavor and collagen that softens into gelatin, giving the broth body.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks slowly in the liquid.
Clove
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice note to the broth.

The step that matters

Stew for 1 hour until the meat is tender. Long, slow cooking breaks down the connective tissue in the veal into gelatin. This tenderizes the meat and gives the broth a fuller, silkier body. Stopping too early leaves the meat tough and the broth thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, clove, pepper, lettuce, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, pepper, lettuce, chervil. 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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