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Brown Stock

A beef stock made by browning shin beef, simmering with bones, water, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaf, salt, parsley, and chopped root vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lean meat into small pieces and brown it in a hot frying pan using the marrow from the bone.

  2. Put the bone and fat in a kettle.

  3. Add the cold water and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  4. Place over heat and bring to a boil, removing the scum as it rises.

  5. Add the browned meat.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cover the kettle, reduce heat, and cook at a boil for 5 hours.

  2. Add the prepared vegetables and seasoning, and cook for an additional 2 hours.

  3. Strain the stock immediately.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin beef
Provides meat flavour and body to the stock as it cooks down slowly.
Bone (in the method)
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the water during long simmering.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens and browns in the stock.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and a rounder flavour to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Removing the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that cloud the stock and can taste bitter. Skimming it as the water comes to a boil keeps the finished stock clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, potato, turnip, onion, carrot, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, potato, turnip, onion, carrot, celery. 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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