Skip to main content
Main

Plain Brown Stock

A clear beef stock made by simmering shin beef, bones, vegetables, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Plain Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat from the meat and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Soak the meat in the measured water.

  3. Heat the dripping until very hot.

  4. Brown the onions in the dripping.

Simmer

  1. Add the meat and bones to the water, bring slowly to just below boiling point, and simmer for 3 hours.

  2. Add the vegetables and simmer for an additional 2 hours.

Strain and cool

  1. Strain the stock.

  2. Allow the stock to cool and remove the fat.

  3. The meat and bones can be used for a second 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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin beef
Gives the stock its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Raw bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the long-simmered stock, adding body.
Onions
Browning in dripping adds deeper, sweeter savoury notes to the stock.
Dripping
Fat for browning the onions, adding roasted flavour before the stock is made.

The step that matters

Bringing the stock to just below boiling. Keeping the liquid just below boiling, rather than at a rolling boil, lets it simmer gently. A hard boil makes the stock cloudy and can emulsify fat into it, so a slow, gentle simmer gives a clearer result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes