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Stock, White, for White Soups and Sauces

A clear stock made from veal, ham, and optional meats, simmered with pepper, salt, and optional vegetables and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stock, White, for White Soups and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Combine veal, ham, and any meat trimmings in a stewpan.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, and the optional fowl or rabbit carcass.

  3. Pour in 4 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat, skim the surface, and let simmer gently for 3 hours.

  5. If desired, add carrot, turnip, sweet herbs, and mace during simmering.

Strain

  1. Strain the stock into an earthenware pan until 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Meat + rabbittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together315 recipes

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

  5. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Breaks down during long simmering, releasing gelatin and flavour into the stock for body.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock's overall flavour.
Fowl or rabbit carcass
Adds bones and connective tissue that enrich the stock with gelatin and body.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after bringing to a boil. Foam and coagulated proteins rise to the surface as the liquid heats. Skimming removes them so the stock stays clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, meat, pepper, rabbit, turnip, mace):

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, meat, pepper, rabbit, turnip, mace. 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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