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A hearty stock made from beef, veal, or poultry with vegetables, bacon, and seasonings simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Stock

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat and bacon into pieces about 3 inches square.

  2. Rub the butter on the bottom of a stewpan.

Make the stock

  1. Add ½ pint of water, the meat, and all other ingredients to the stewpan.

  2. Cover the stewpan and place it on a stove, stirring occasionally.

  3. When the bottom of the pan is covered with a pale, jelly‑like substance, add 4 quarts of cold water.

  4. Simmer gently for 5 hours, ensuring it does not boil quickly.

  5. Remove any scum while cooking and strain through a fine sieve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef or knuckle of veal
Provides meat flavour and gelatin from connective tissue, giving the stock body.
Lean bacon or ham
Adds savoury, smoky flavour to the stock.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the stock.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic, herbal background flavour to the stock.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. A rapid boil makes the stock cloudy and can emulsify fat into it, while a gentle simmer keeps the liquid clear and lets collagen slowly release gelatin for a richer body.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, ham, butter, onion, turnip, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, ham, butter, onion, turnip, carrot. 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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