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Broth for Potages

A beef broth made with vegetables, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Broth for Potages

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in a soup kettle with cold water and salt.

  2. Set on a good fire and bring to a boil for about 30 minutes.

  3. Reduce heat to moderate, add ½ cup cold water, and skim off the scum.

  4. Add the carrot, turnip, leek, celery, parsley, bay leaf, onion, and garlic.

  5. Keep the kettle at a simmer for about 5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Dish the meat with carrot, turnip, and leek around it.

  2. Strain the broth and it is ready for use.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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

Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the broth its body and savoury taste.
Onion
Adds sweet, aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Leek
Adds a mild, savoury onion-like aroma to the broth.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during long simmering.

The step that matters

Keep the kettle at a simmer, not a boil. After the initial boil and scum removal, a gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets collagen and flavour extract slowly. A hard boil would emulsify fat and fragment the solids, leaving the broth cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

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

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