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Soup

General Stock

A basic stock made from meat, bones, water, carrot, turnip, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

General Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop and break up the meat and bones.

  2. Place them in a pot with cold water.

Simmer

  1. Bring to a boil slowly, skimming off any scum that rises.

  2. Maintain a steady boil for 2 to 6 hours, as time permits.

  3. One hour before finishing, add the carrot, turnip, and onion.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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

Meat and bones
Collagen from the bones and meat dissolves into the liquid, giving the stock body and a rich mouthfeel.
Carrot
Releases natural sugars and aromatic compounds that add mild sweetness and depth to the stock.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and earthy aroma to the broth.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and sweetness as its compounds release into the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Bringing the pot to a boil slowly and skimming the scum. Heating gradually lets proteins and impurities rise to the surface as scum, where they can be skimmed off. If they are left to mix back in, they cloud the stock and can add off flavors.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, clove. 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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