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Le Grand Bouillon

A traditional French beef broth made with beef, water, root vegetables, celery, leeks, onions, cloves, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Le Grand Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large pot with cold water.

  2. Heat on the stove and skim off the scum as it forms.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions, one of which is stuffed with cloves.

  2. Add a handful of salt and let simmer for 5 hours.

  3. Strain the broth through a cloth or double silk sieve.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Breaks down during long simmering to release flavour and gelatin into the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they cook down into the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum as it forms. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the water heats. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and prevents off flavours from returning into the liquid during the long simmer.

Swap the clove

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

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

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