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Bouillon, or Clear Soup

A clear beef broth made with lean beef, vegetables, spices, and egg whites, finished with browned sugar for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bouillon, or Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef and water

  1. Cut the beef into walnut-sized pieces.

  2. Remove all fat from the beef.

  3. Pour the water over the beef.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Skim the broth three times.

Add vegetables and seasonings

  1. Scrape the carrots.

  2. Insert 4 cloves into each onion.

  3. Add the carrots and onions to the soup.

  4. Add celery seed, parsley, mace, salt, and pepper.

  5. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

Clarify and finish

  1. Strain through a bag.

  2. Return the liquid to the pot.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Boil until the egg whites gather to one side.

  5. Skim off the egg whites.

  6. Burn the brown sugar until amber.

  7. Stir the browned sugar into the soup.

  8. Wash the bag in warm water.

  9. Pour the soup through again.

  10. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + carrottop 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

Lean beef
Provides the main meat flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Eggs
Egg whites collect impurities as they set, clarifying the broth to a clear finish.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and color to the broth during simmering.
Brown sugar
Burned to amber, it adds caramel color and a deeper, toasted sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until the egg whites gather to one side. Egg whites must be stirred in and left to set without vigorous boiling, so they trap cloudy particles and can be skimmed off. Boiling hard would break up the raft and cloud the broth.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, onion, carrot, parsley, clove, egg. 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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