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Soup

Beef Soup Stock

A clear beef stock made by simmering beef shank, bones, and butter in hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Beef Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into thin pieces.

  2. Remove the marrow and place it in a kettle with butter.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the kettle and add the meat, cooking until browned.

  2. Add the bones and enough hot water to cover everything.

  3. Boil for four hours.

Strain

  1. Strain the stock and set aside to cool.

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. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Supplies meat flavour and collagen that breaks down into gelatin, giving the stock body.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the meat and marrow brown in the kettle.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before adding water. Browning triggers Maillard reactions that build deep, savoury flavour. Meat added to water without browning yields a paler, blander stock.

“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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