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General Rules for Soup Stock

A basic soup stock made by simmering meat, bones, vegetables, and herbs for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

General Rules for Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the meat and bones in cold water for 1 hour to extract juices.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces and wash clean.

Simmer

  1. In a pot, combine the soaked meat, bones, and 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, cloves, celery, parsley, onion, carrot, turnip, bay leaf, and herbs.

  3. Simmer on low heat for 6 to 8 hours without boiling hard.

  4. Do not remove the scum while cooking.

Brown and finish

  1. For a dark-brown stock, brown reserved meat and vegetables in fat.

  2. Add browned sugar or caramel for color if desired.

  3. Once done, strain the stock and let it cool.

  4. Remove the fat that forms on top before reheating.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and bones
Release juices and flavor into the water during soaking and long simmering.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the stock as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock.
Celery root
Adds aromatic depth and savory background flavor to the stock.
Browned sugar or caramel
Deepens the color of the stock and adds a mild toasted sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer on low heat without boiling hard. Gentle simmering lets flavor leach out slowly while keeping the stock clear. A hard boil emulsifies fat and cloudies the liquid, making it greasy and murky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, clove, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip):

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

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