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Bouillon

A clear beef broth made by simmering beef, onion, garlic, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bouillon

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Stick cloves into half an onion and fry in butter until brown.

  2. Add chopped beef and brown slightly.

  3. Pour in cold water, cover, and let it sit on low heat for 2 hours.

Simmer and clarify

  1. Bring to a boil, add 1 cup cold water, and skim when boiling.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours, then add salt, pepper, celery seed, bay leaf, and parsley.

  3. Simmer for another hour.

  4. Mix egg white with ½ cup cold water, add crushed shell, boil once, and skim.

  5. Strain through a flannel bag into a bowl, cool, and skim off fat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty flavour and body that the broth is built on.
Butter
Fat that browns the onion and adds richness and aroma from the start.
Onion
Browned in butter with cloves to add sweetness and savoury depth.
Egg white
Binds to fine particles as it cooks, drawing them out so the broth turns clear.

The step that matters

Keep the broth at a gentle simmer. A hard boil breaks up fat and proteins into the liquid, making the broth cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer lets impurities rise to be skimmed off cleanly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, butter, beef, pepper, parsley, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, butter, beef, pepper, parsley, 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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