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Brown Stock

A stock made by browning meat and simmering with seasonings and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the meat in cold water for 1 hour in a kettle ready for cooking.

  2. Remove a few pieces of meat and brown them in melted butter or fat.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the browned meat back to the kettle and let it simmer for 4 hours.

  2. Add the seasonings and chopped vegetables, then simmer for another hour.

  3. Once cooled, skim off the grease that rises to the surface before using.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the stock body.
Chopped vegetables
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock's flavor as they simmer.
Butter or fat
Browning the meat in fat builds deeper, roasted flavor through the Maillard reaction.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Browning in fat before simmering creates Maillard reactions that give the stock a deeper, roasted flavor. Pale meat produces a lighter, blander stock.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, thyme, parsley, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, thyme, parsley, butter. 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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