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Soup

Stock Made From Cow-heel

A clear stock made by simmering a cleaned cow-heel and beef shin with vegetables and spices for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stock Made From Cow-heel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cleaned cow-heel and shin of beef in a stewpan with 3 quarts of water.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, onion, cloves, peppercorns, allspice, herbs, mace, and lemon rind.

Simmer the stock

  1. Bring the mixture slowly to a boil.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Let the cow-heel simmer until the stock is strong.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  5. Remove the beef if making brawn.

Store

  1. Pour the finished stock into an earthenware pan and use as needed.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Cow-heel
Releases gelatin into the liquid, giving the finished stock body and a natural setting quality.
Shin of beef
Adds meaty flavour and additional gelatin-rich connective tissue to the stock.
Water
Acts as the cooking medium that extracts flavour and gelatin from the bones and meat.

The step that matters

Skim off any scum that rises to the surface. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities; removing it as it rises keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, allspice, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, allspice, lemon. 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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