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Principles Stock

A stock made by simmering mutton bones with vegetables and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Principles Stock

about 2 quarts of liquid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the leg of mutton bone into small pieces.

  2. Place the bones in a saucepan with cold water.

  3. Add parsley, onion, carrots, turnip, celery (or celery seed), thyme, cayenne pepper, salt, and leeks (if using).

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer gently for 3-4 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture into a large basin, ensuring you have about 2 quarts of liquid.

  3. Stir in the extract of meat to enrich 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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

Mutton bone
Releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the water during long simmering, giving body to the stock.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the stock's flavour.
Extract of meat
Concentrates savoury meaty flavour, deepening the stock's overall richness.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer keeps the stock clear; a vigorous boil emulsifies fat and cloudies the liquid while over-reducing it. Slow heat also draws out gelatin and flavour from the bones gradually.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, onion, clove, carrot, celery, thyme):

  1. Turnipthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, onion, clove, carrot, celery, thyme. 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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