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 ↓
Stock for All Sottps
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Rub a 2-gallon stew pan with some veal fat.
Add water, chopped veal, milk (or cream), salt, onions, turnip, carrot, and celery to the pan.
Make the stock
Cover the pan and set it over a sharp fire, stirring until a thick, whitish glaze forms on the bottom.
Fill the pan with cold water and simmer for 3 hours, skimming off grease and scum.
Pass the stock through a fine sieve and it is ready for use.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
-
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal knuckle
- Releases gelatin and savory flavour into the liquid, giving the stock body.
- Onions
- Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook slowly in the liquid.
- Milk or cream
- Adds richness and a mellow, creamy note to the finished stock.
The step that matters
Stirring until a thick, whitish glaze forms on the bottom. The pan must be hot enough to build a glaze from the meat and milk proteins without burning. Burnt proteins turn bitter and can taint the whole stock, so stir constantly while it develops.
Swap the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, onion, turnip, carrot, celery):
- Parsleyfits better
- Thymefits better
- Marjoramfits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, onion, turnip, carrot, celery. 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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