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Stock Without Meat

A clear vegetable stock made from carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, celery, chervil, cabbage, parsnip, peas, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 396 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stock Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Combine carrots, turnips, onions, lettuces, celery, chervil, cabbage, and parsnip in a stew pan.

  2. Add butter and 1 quart of water.

  3. Stew until the liquid is nearly evaporated.

Finish and strain

  1. Fill the stew pan with more water.

  2. Add peas, chives, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Strain through a colander.

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. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the stock as they soften during long stewing.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they break down during slow cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and carries aroma from the vegetables into the liquid.
Peas
Contribute starch and a mild sweetness that adds body to the stock.

The step that matters

Stew until the liquid is nearly evaporated. Reducing the liquid concentrates the flavors from the vegetables. Stopping too early leaves the stock weak, while reducing too far can scorch the vegetables on the pan bottom.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, lettuce, celery, chervil, cabbage, parsnip):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Endivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, lettuce, celery, chervil, cabbage, parsnip. 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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