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Potage a LA Courte Bouillon

A hearty soup of ham, beef, veal, consommé, sherry, vegetables, cabbage, onions, and French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Potage a LA Courte Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stewpan, cook ham, beef, and veal with spices and vegetables as for soupe de santé.

  2. Add consommé and sherry.

  3. Cook until the meat is tender.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Prepare carrots and celery as for vegetable soup.

  2. Blanch and stew them in strong consommé.

  3. Stew whole cabbage lettuces like the carrots and celery.

  4. Fry the small onions until brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Add them to the soup pot with the other vegetables.

  2. Simmer the soup gently for four hours, skimming as needed.

  3. Fry the crusts of two French rolls until light brown.

  4. Place them in a tureen.

  5. Pour the soup over the fried rolls.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Gives the broth a savoury, meaty flavour during the long cooking.
Beef
Releases flavour and body into the broth as it cooks until tender.
Veal
Adds gelatin and a mild meaty richness to the broth.
Cabbage lettuces
Provide tender body and vegetable sweetness after stewing in consommé.
French rolls
Fried crusts soak up the soup and give a crisp, browned contrast.
Small onions
Browning them adds sweetness and deep colour to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer the soup gently for four hours. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets collagen and flavour extract slowly. A hard boil would cloud the liquid and emulsify fat into it.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, veal, sherry, carrot, celery, lettuce):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, veal, sherry, carrot, celery, lettuce. 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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