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To Season Stock

A stock flavored with herbs, spices, and seasonings, simmered gently and strained.

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 ingredients in the stock.

Simmer 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
Clarifies the stock by collecting fine particles as it heats.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock as it steeps.
Onion
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavours.

The step that matters

Heat slowly until the first bubbling appears. Heating gently lets the egg white coagulate and gather impurities so they can be strained out. Boiling vigorously would break up the clarifying raft and leave the stock cloudy.

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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