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Brown Stock

A clear beef stock made by simmering beef, bones, vegetables, and herbs in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the chopped beef and bones in a large pot.

  2. Add the chopped celery, carrots, leek, onion, shallots, and sweet herbs.

  3. Pour in 20 cups of water, using 2 cups for every pound of beef.

Simmer and strain

  1. Bring to a gentle boil and maintain this temperature for several hours without allowing it to bubble.

  2. Skim the surface as soon as it begins to boil, then strain the stock.

Finish

  1. Add vermicelli, rice, tapioca, or macaroni, but do not boil them with the meat or vegetables.

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. Leek + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the rich, savory flavor and gelatin that gives the stock body.
Bones
Release collagen and minerals during long cooking, adding body and depth to the stock.
Celery, carrots, leek, onion, shallots
Build the aromatic flavor base that sweetens and rounds out the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the stock at a gentle simmer. A hard boil emulsifies fat and clouds the stock, and churns fine particles into it. Holding a bare simmer keeps the liquid clear and the fat easier to skim.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, carrot, leek, onion):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, carrot, leek, onion. 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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