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Plain Stock

A clear beef stock made with water, beef leg, optional fowl or rabbit, vegetables, and salt, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Plain Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the beef leg or shin in two or three places and wash it.

  2. Cut some nice pieces of beef to eat and cover with water.

Make the stock

  1. Boil slowly and add an old fowl, rabbit, meat trimmings, or bones if desired.

  2. Remove the first scum as it rises.

  3. Add salt, carrot, celery, turnips, and onions.

  4. Simmer gently for 4 to 5 hours.

  5. Strain the stock.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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

Beef leg or shin
Provides the main meat flavour and gelatine that gives the stock body.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they cook slowly in the liquid.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, herbal flavour to the stock.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy background flavour.

The step that matters

Remove the first scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that cloud the stock and can taste bitter if left to mix back in. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rabbit, meat, carrot, celery, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rabbit, meat, carrot, celery, turnip. 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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