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To Season Stock

A seasoning mixture for stock using herbs, spices, egg white, and shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Season Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the herbs together.

  2. Combine all seasoning, beaten egg white, and crushed shell in the stock.

Clarify and strain

  1. Heat slowly until the first bubbling appears.

  2. Move the kettle to the back of the range to maintain heat without boiling.

  3. Cover the kettle closely to prevent reduction.

  4. Let it stand for 30 minutes, then strain.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 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

Egg white and shell
Egg white and crushed shell bind to impurities as they heat, clarifying the stock.
Stock
Serves as the liquid base that carries the seasoning and gets clarified.
Salt
Seasons the stock.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and keep below a boil. Boiling vigorously breaks up the egg white raft and stirs impurities back into the liquid, leaving a cloudy stock. Gentle heating lets the egg white coagulate and trap particles so they can be strained out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, celery, sage, clove, cinnamon, carrot, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, celery, sage, clove, cinnamon, carrot, parsley. 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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