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Stock for Soup

A clear beef or veal broth made by simmering meat, bones, vegetables, and seasonings for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stock for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place beef or veal and bones in a large pot with cold water.

  2. Simmer for 5 hours.

  3. For added flavor, sauté onion and add it along with carrot, parsley, and celery to the pot an hour before finishing.

  4. Strain the stock through a sieve.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Cool the stock and remove the fat that rises to the top before using.

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal
Provides the meat flavor and gelatin-rich body as it simmers slowly in water.
Cold water
Acts as the cooking liquid that slowly extracts flavor and body from the meat and bones.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth when sautéed before going into the pot.

The step that matters

Cool the stock and remove the fat before using. Fat rises and solidifies as the stock cools, so skimming it off gives a cleaner, less greasy result. Skipping this step leaves an oily layer in the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, parsley, celery, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, parsley, celery, clove. 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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