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Four Quarts of Brown Stock

A beef and ham stock simmered for six hours, strained and fat removed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Four Quarts of Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat an iron pot and rub the bottom with garlic.

  2. Add the beef and water; let it stand by the fire for 1 hour.

Simmer

  1. Add the ham, onions, carrots, celery, cloves, allspice, peppercorns, brown sugar, mustard, salt, black onion, and water.

  2. Simmer and skim frequently for 6 hours.

Strain and skim

  1. Strain into an earthen dish and let it cool.

  2. Remove the fat using a fine hair sieve dipped in cold water.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides the main body, gelatin and meaty flavour of the stock.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock's overall flavour.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook down into the liquid.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the long-simmered broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, herbal background flavour to the stock.
Black onion
Adds extra onion flavour and colour to the stock.

The step that matters

Skim frequently while simmering. Fat and impurities rise to the surface during a long simmer. Skimming them regularly keeps the stock clear and prevents greasy, cloudy flavour as it reduces.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, carrot, celery, clove, allspice, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, celery, clove, allspice, sugar. 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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