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Stock and Seasoning

A basic stock made by simmering meat and bones with water, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stock and Seasoning

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat and bones into small pieces and break or saw the bones into short lengths.

  2. Combine the meat and bones in a tightly covered kettle.

  3. Add 2 quarts of cold water, 1 teaspoon of salt, and ½ teaspoon of black pepper.

Make the stock

  1. Let the mixture sit until the water is slightly colored by the meat juices.

  2. Bring to a boil slowly, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Add 1 cup of cold water to help the scum rise more freely.

  4. Boil steadily but slowly for 1 hour per pound of meat.

  5. After cooking, the liquid will reduce to about half or one-third of the original amount.

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. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the water as they simmer, giving the stock body.
Water
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and gelatin from the meat and bones.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil slowly and skim the scum. Starting cold and heating gently lets proteins and impurities rise as scum that can be skimmed off, keeping the stock clear. Boiling hard too early would emulsify fat and cloud the liquid.

“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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