Skip to main content
Main

Stock Soup

A hearty broth made from beef or veal bones, bacon, vegetables, and seasonings, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat and bacon or ham into pieces about 3 inches square.

  2. Rub the butter on the bottom of a large stewpan.

Make the stock

  1. Add ½ pint of water, the meat, and all other ingredients to the stewpan.

  2. Cover the stewpan and place it on high heat, stirring occasionally.

  3. When the bottom of the pan is covered with a pale, jelly‑like substance, add 4 quarts of cold water.

  4. Simmer very gently for 5 hours, ensuring it does not boil quickly.

  5. Remove any scum that forms and 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 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 of beef or knuckle of veal
Provides meat and collagen that break down into gelatin, giving the stock body.
Bones or trimmings
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during the long simmer.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury, salty depth and aroma to the stock.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the liquid.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently for 5 hours. A rapid boil makes the stock cloudy and greasy and can break up the fat and proteins, so keep the liquid just barely simmering. Skimming scum as it forms keeps the finished stock clear.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, ham, butter, onion, turnip, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, ham, butter, onion, turnip, carrot. 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.

More beef stock recipes

Brown 13Clear 8Gravy 3Soup 3Rich 3 See all 226 →

You might also like

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