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Stock for All Kinds of Soup

A clear, clarified stock made from veal or beef, butter, water, salt, onions, turnip, carrot, celery, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Stock for All Kinds of Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a soup pot and add the meat.

  2. Pour in 1 cup of cold water and add the salt, onions, turnip, carrot, and celery.

  3. Cover the pot and stir occasionally until a whitish glaze forms on the bottom.

Make the stock

  1. Fill the pot with cold water and simmer until it jellies.

  2. Strain the stock while hot and adjust flavors as desired.

Clarify and strain

  1. To clarify, return the strained stock to heat and skim well.

  2. Whisk the egg whites in a cup of cold water, then mix with a cup of boiling stock.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the boiling stock while whisking continuously.

  4. Remove from heat and let sit for a few minutes before straining again.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Veal or beef knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory meat flavor that gives the stock body and a jelly-like set.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as they cook slowly.
Egg whites
Coagulate and trap cloudy particles, so they can be skimmed off and the stock turns clear.
Butter
Carries flavor from the meat and vegetables and helps begin the browning of the glaze.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg whites. The egg mixture must be added to boiling stock while whisking constantly. If it is poured in unevenly or stirred too little, the whites clump and cook unevenly, so they fail to trap the cloudy particles and the stock stays murky.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, onion, clove, turnip, carrot, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, onion, clove, turnip, carrot, egg. 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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