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Making Soup Stock

A beef stock made by simmering beef, bones, onion, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Making Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the beef with a damp cloth and cut it from the bone into small pieces.

Make the stock

  1. In a stock kettle, heat 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 sliced onion over high heat until browned.

  2. Add the meat to the kettle and stir until slightly scorched.

  3. Add the cracked bones and 5 quarts of cold water.

  4. Cover the kettle, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.

  5. Reduce heat to moderate and simmer.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + oniontop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and body that the stock is built on.
Bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the water during long simmering.
Sugar
Caramelises with the onion to add colour and deeper, browned flavour.
Onion
Browns with the sugar to add sweetness and aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Skimming off the foam. Foam contains coagulated proteins and impurities that cloud the stock and taint its flavour if left in, so it should be removed as the liquid first boils.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar. 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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