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📝 To summarize 🍲 To thicken by cooking
to boil down

to boil down

3 3.8
Cook a liquid until much of its water goes away and it becomes thicker
  • phrasal verb
  • /bɔɪl daʊn/
translation icon : reducir
  • Perhaps chickens need to be slaughtered, a playhouse built, the lawn mowed, and a thousand gallons of sap boiled down into maple syrup.
  • boil down to a gallon
  • boiled down into syrup
  • boil down the liquid

But essentially the oil, oil, the oil will boil down.

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Examples

  • Uncountable tomatoes were crushed and boiled down into puree, stored in corked bottles sealed with tar.

    Blog text (4)

  • She kept thinking that there was a better way to boil down the mixture Jondalar wanted to make.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Or else you could boil down the solution, concentrate it, and then grow crystals by cooling that solution.

  • I tried to think of a different way to state this, but that's pretty much what it boiled down to.

    Blog text (25)

  • And then we boil the thing down to make this sludge that ignites.

  • To create a rich sauce, allow the stock to boil down until it thickens significantly.

  • The chef decided to boil down the vegetable broth to enhance its flavor before serving.

  • We need to boil down the mixture for about an hour to achieve the desired syrupy consistency.

Synonyms

to concentrate
vsto boil down
83 4.4

To make a liquid thicker by removing water

focuses on cooking by strong evaporation to thicken and intensify flavour
to reduce
vsto boil down
50 4.1

To boil or simmer a liquid until it becomes thicker

evaporates much of the liquid to make it much thicker and concentrated
to decoct
vsto boil down
  • Specialized
9.9

Boil a plant or herb in water to make a strong liquid

focuses on cooking liquid to thicken rather than extracting plant medicines

Antonyms

dilute
1 4.2

A liquid that is weaker after adding water

How Concentrated

to boil down
3 3.8
to reduce
50 4.1

Surface Forms

boil down infinitive
boiled down past
boiled down past participle
boiling down present participle
boils down third person singular

Morphology

boil + down

The phrase uses a clear metaphor of boiling as concentrating or reducing a substance, so 'boil down to X' means to reduce an issue to its essentials — a link that is present between the literal verb and the idiomatic sense. However, this cooking-to-reduction metaphor and the particle 'down' role require a degree of figurative inference that a B1 learner who only knows the single-word meanings may not reliably make, so the expression is only partially predictable.

Etymology

Boil down comes from cooking: when you boil a sauce the water slowly disappears and the liquid goes down to a smaller, thicker amount. So the phrase means 'to cook a liquid until it becomes thicker or more concentrated'.