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Brown Soup Stock

A stock made from raw meat, browned meat and bone, water, celery, bay leaf, parsley, carrot, turnip, onion, salt, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Brown Soup Stock

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 ↓

Brown Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the raw meat into small pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a kettle with a tightly fitting cover and cover the meat with cold water.

  3. Add the bone and browned meat.

  4. If only raw meat is used, brown ⅓ of it in suet in a frying pan, then add the browned portion to the kettle.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cover tightly and let soak for 1 hour.

  2. Simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. In the last hour of cooking, add the vegetables and seasoning.

  4. After the vegetables are cooked, strain the stock.

  5. Save the meat and vegetables for use in meat pie or other dishes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Raw meat
Provides the main flavor and gelatin-rich body as it simmers slowly in water.
Browned meat and bone
Adds deeper, roasted flavor and richness to the stock.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma as it softens in the liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the stock at a gentle simmer. A hard boil makes the liquid cloudy and emulsifies fat into it, while gentle simmering keeps the stock clear and rich over the long cooking time.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip. 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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