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Stock Fob Soups or Gravies

A clear stock made from veal or beef shins, onions, water, egg whites, and shells, then strained and clarified.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stock Fob Soups or Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Put the veal or beef shins and onions into 8 quarts of water.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Strain into a stone jar and cool.

  4. Remove the fat when cold.

Clarify and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites and stir them into the cold soup with the broken egg shells.

  2. Set the soup off the fire and stir until the scum rises.

  3. Boil for 4-5 minutes, then set aside to settle and strain before serving hot.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or beef shins
Release gelatin and meaty flavour into the water during long simmering, giving body to the stock.
Egg whites
Trap cloudy particles as they set, so the stock clears when strained.
Onions
Add savoury, aromatic flavour to the stock as they simmer.

The step that matters

Set the soup off the fire and stir until the scum rises. If the soup boils while the egg white is setting, the particles are churned back into the liquid instead of rising with the scum. Stirring off the heat lets the coagulated egg white gather the impurities so they can be removed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, flour. 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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Clear 33White 28Brown 9Clarified 7 See all 71 →

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