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White Stock

A clear veal stock made by simmering knuckle, bones, ham, vegetables, herbs, and spices for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe and cut the meat into small pieces and soak in water with some salt.

  2. Wash the bones and soak them separately to remove blood.

Simmer

  1. Add the meat and bones to a pot with water and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Add the vegetables, herbs, and mace, and simmer for 3 hours longer.

  4. Strain the stock through a fine sieve.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Lemon + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together770 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Collagen from the bones and connective tissue gives the stock body and a silky mouthfeel.
Chicken bones
Bones release gelatin and minerals during long simmering, adding body and savoury depth.
Raw ham
Cured meat adds savoury, salty flavour that deepens the stock.
Onions
Sugars and aromatic compounds sweeten and round out the stock's flavour.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and vegetable aroma to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking the meat and bones before cooking. Soaking draws out blood and surface impurities that would otherwise cloud the stock and add off-flavours. Soaking bones and meat separately keeps the blood from spreading into the liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, chicken, lemon, ham, turnip):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, chicken, lemon, ham, 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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