Skip to main content
Main

A Good Stock Soup

A hearty soup made from beef brisket, mutton bones, vegetables, and optional chicken or duck bones, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

A Good Stock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the meat, crack the bones, and chop the vegetables.

  2. Put all ingredients in a pot with the cold water.

Make the stock

  1. Boil slowly for five to six hours.

  2. Strain the soup and set aside the meat.

  3. Rub the vegetables through a colander and strain through a soup sieve.

  4. Set aside half the stock for later use.

  5. Season the stock before storing to prevent souring.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, boil the stock again and skim the surface.

  2. Add the soaked sago and simmer for twenty minutes before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Provides the meat and flavour that give the stock its body.
Mutton bones
Release gelatine and savoury flavour into the water during long simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the stock as they cook down.
Turnips
Contribute sweetness and earthy flavour to the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic depth to the stock as it simmers.
Sago or barley
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when simmered.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for five to six hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavour and gelatine from the bones and meat while keeping the stock clear. A hard rolling boil emulsifies fat and fine particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, chicken. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes