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Brcwn Stock

A beef stock made with shin, bones, celery, parsley, carrot, onion, turnip, mace, bay leaf, and black pepper, simmered for five hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Brcwn Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into half-inch squares, removing all the fat.

  2. Break up the bones and remove the marrow.

  3. Place the meat and bones in a saucepan with the cold water and salt.

Make the stock

  1. Bring slowly to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add the celery, parsley, carrot, browned onion, turnip, mace, bay leaf, and black pepper.

  3. Simmer very slowly for five hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the stock and let it cool, then remove the fat.

  2. The stock is now ready for use.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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

Beef shin or bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the stock body and richness.
Onion
Adds sweet, savory depth to the stock's aroma and color when browned.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and aromatic flavor to the simmering liquid.
Celery
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma that rounds out the stock's flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer very slowly. A gentle simmer keeps the stock clear and extracts flavor and gelatin steadily. A hard boil makes it cloudy and greasy as fat and particles emulsify into the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, parsley, carrot, onion, turnip, pepper. 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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