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Soup Stock, or Broth

A clear beef stock made by simmering bone, meat, vegetables, and herbs for 2 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup Stock, or Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the cracked bone and solid piece of meat in the bottom of a soup kettle. Add cold water and heat gradually over the fire.

  2. Skim off any blood and albumen that rises as it boils.

  3. Add the whole carrot, turnip, onion, salt, pepper, herbs, parsley, and celery.

  4. Cook slowly for 2 hours to secure flavor; longer cooking will create a jellied consistency.

Strain and chill

  1. Strain through a sieve or a folded towel in a colander into an earthen vessel.

  2. When cold, remove the fat that rises to the top.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef neck or bone
Releases collagen and gelatin during long simmering, giving the stock body and flavor.
Veal knuckle
Adds extra gelatin, helping the stock set to a jelly when cold.
Onion
Adds sweet, savory aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 2 hours. Gentle simmering extracts flavor without clouding the stock. Longer cooking extracts more gelatin, so the stock sets into a firm jelly rather than staying liquid.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Winter savoryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, pepper, parsley. 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 soup stock recipes

Clear 33White 28Brown 9Clarified 7 See all 71 →

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