Skip to main content
Soup

White Stock

A clear stock made by slowly simmering veal shin and fowl with celery, onion, mace and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. In a large soup pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the veal and fowl pieces along with ½ pint of the cold water.

  3. Cover and cook gently for 30 minutes, stirring often.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the remaining water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any foam.

  3. Reduce heat to maintain a gentle boil for 6 hours.

  4. Add the celery, onions, mace, and cinnamon, and boil for an additional hour.

  5. Strain the stock.

Cool and store

  1. Let the stock cool quickly.

  2. In the morning, remove all the fat from the surface.

  3. Pour the stock into a deep dish.

  4. Scrape off any sediment from the bottom.

  5. Transfer the stock to a stone pot and store in a cold place.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal shin
Breaks down over long simmering to release gelatin and body into the stock.
Fowl
Adds savory meat flavor and gelatin that give the stock body.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor to the stock during the final hour of simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the stock as they simmer.

The step that matters

Keep the stock at a gentle boil for 6 hours. A vigorous boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the stock cloudy, while a gentle simmer keeps it clear and extracts collagen slowly into gelatin.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, celery, onion, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, celery, onion, cinnamon, pepper. 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.

More white stock recipes

Soup 6 See all 61 →

You might also like

Cream of CeleryCream of Celery37 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes