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Soup

To Make Stock

A savory broth made by simmering beef or veal, ham, onions, turnip, carrot, celery, and water for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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To Make Stock

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Make Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef or veal into pieces about 2 inches square.

  2. Cut the ham into pieces and scald it for 5 minutes.

Make the stock

  1. Place the meat in a 2-gallon pot with the onions, turnip, carrot, and celery.

  2. Pour 5 quarts of cold water over the ingredients.

  3. Bring the mixture slowly to a boil, then skim off any foam.

  4. Reduce the heat and let it simmer gently for 6 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal knuckle
Provides collagen and meat flavour that give the stock body and richness as it simmers.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stock.
Cold water
Serves as the solvent that extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a boil slowly and skim off the foam. Starting with cold water and heating gradually lets proteins and impurities rise as foam, which can be skimmed off. Boiling hard too early can emulsify these into a cloudy stock.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, turnip, carrot, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, turnip, carrot, celery. 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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