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Soup

Stock for Soup

A beef stock made by simmering beef, bones, and trimmings in water, skimming scum, and extracting gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,533 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Stock for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Start the stock

  1. Combine the beef and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then skim off any scum that rises.

Simmer

  1. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook without tightly covering the pot.

  2. Add boiling water if any has evaporated.

Finish

  1. Once the meat separates from the bones, remove it for other dishes.

  2. Continue simmering the bones to extract gelatin.

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. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Meat and bones release flavor, and their collagen becomes gelatin that gives body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, not at a boil. A hard boil churns fat and impurities into the liquid, making stock cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer lets scum rise and fat separate, giving a clearer stock.

“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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