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To Clarify Stock

A clarified veal stock made by simmering veal, vegetables, and spices, then removing solids.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Clarify Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the stock

  1. Place the stock in a large pot over a brisk fire.

  2. Beat the egg whites in a little water.

  3. Add a little hot stock to the beaten egg whites and pour gradually into the pot.

  4. Allow the mixture to boil once.

  5. Strain the stock through a thin flannel cloth.

Simmer the soup

  1. In a separate kettle, boil a knuckle of veal with 5-6 quarts of cold water for about 2 hours until tender.

  2. Season the stock with 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt and 1 teaspoon of black pepper.

  3. Boil the seasoned stock for an additional hour.

  4. Add the minced carrot, turnips, rice or pearl barley, minced celery, and powdered allspice.

  5. After 15 minutes, add the cut potatoes.

  6. Boil for another 30 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove the meat from the soup.

  2. Remove the bones from the soup.

  3. Serve the clarified stock neatly on a dish.

  4. Serve hot with mustard, vinegar, or catsup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Stock
Forms the liquid base that all the other ingredients cook in and flavours.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping cloudy particles so they can be strained out clear.
Rice or pearl barley
Release starch as they cook, lightly thickening the soup and giving it body.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and release starch, adding body to the soup.

The step that matters

Letting the egg white mixture boil only once. Egg whites form a raft that traps cloudy particles as they set. Boiling hard or stirring after that breaks the raft apart and the particles return, leaving the stock cloudy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, carrot, turnip, rice, celery, potato):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, carrot, turnip, rice, celery, potato. 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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