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Consomme of Fresh Vegetable Roots

A clear consommé made from carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, peas, lettuces, and beans, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Consomme of Fresh Vegetable Roots

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine sliced carrots, onions, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, and butter.

  2. Cook gently until the mixture turns red.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add water and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Stir in peas and lettuces.

  3. Add salt, whole pepper, nutmeg, cloves, dried peas, and white haricots.

  4. Simmer for 3 hours in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  5. Skim off grease and strain through a cloth.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness and body, with flavour that deepens as they cook gently in butter.
Onions
Build savoury depth and colour as they soften and brown slowly in butter.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness, helping flavour spread through the broth.
Dried peas
Thicken the liquid and add earthy body during the long simmer.
White haricots
Add starch that thickens the broth and gives a mild, creamy body.

The step that matters

Cooking the base gently until red. Slow, gentle cooking in butter softens the vegetables and develops flavour without scorching. High heat would burn the butter and sugars, making the consommé bitter and dark.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, shallot, celery, butter. 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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