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General Rules for Soup Stock

A basic stock made by simmering meat, bones, vegetables, and herbs in water for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

General Rules for Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak meat and bones in cold water for 1 hour to extract juices.

  2. Cut meat into small pieces and wash clean.

Simmer

  1. In a pot, combine soaked meat, bones, and 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, cloves, celery, parsley, onion, carrot, turnip, bay leaf, and herbs.

  3. Simmer on low heat for 6 to 8 hours without boiling hard.

  4. Do not remove scum while cooking; it contains albumen.

Finish

  1. For a dark-brown stock, brown reserved meat and vegetables in fat, or add browned sugar or caramel.

  2. Once done, strain the stock and let it cool until fat forms on top.

  3. Remove fat and reheat before serving.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and bones
Release juices and gelatin that give the stock body and savory flavor.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it simmers into the stock.
Carrot
Contributes mild sweetness and aromatic flavor to the simmered liquid.
Browned sugar or caramel
Adds deeper brown color to the stock; optional for color.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling hard. A hard boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds the stock, while gentle simmering keeps it clear. Leaving the scum on the surface is also part of this, since its albumen helps clarify the stock as it cooks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, clove, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, clove, celery, parsley, carrot, 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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