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Soups. Stock.

A hearty stock made from beef or veal, poultry bones, bacon or ham, vegetables, and herbs simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Soups. Stock.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat and bacon or ham into 3-inch pieces.

  2. Break the bones into small pieces.

  3. Rub the butter on the bottom of a large stewpan.

Simmer the stock

  1. Add the meat, bacon, bones, onions, turnip, carrots, celery, salt, pepper, mace, and herbs to the stewpan. Pour in the cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours.

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. 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
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the liquid during long simmering, giving body to the stock.
Bones and trimmings
Add gelatin and depth of flavor as they simmer slowly in the water.
Lean bacon or ham
Contributes savory, smoky depth to the stock.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the liquid.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic background to the stock.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. Boiling hard makes the stock cloudy and emulsifies fat into it, so it should be brought up slowly and then held at a gentle simmer for several hours.

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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