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Mixed Stock

A broth made by simmering bones, water, salt, onion, garlic, peppercorns, sage, thyme, bay leaf, and summer savory.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mixed Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the bones with cold water.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for each gallon of water.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cook slowly for about 4 hours.

  2. Add half an onion, cloves, peppercorns, sage leaves, thyme, bay leaf, and summer savory.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours longer.

  4. Strain and cool quickly.

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. Thyme + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  2. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

  3. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + summer savorytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones
Release gelatin and collagen into the water, giving the stock body and mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic flavor that infuses the stock during simmering.
Peppercorns
Add gentle, sharp aromatic heat that builds the stock's background flavor.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for about 4 hours. Gentle simmering draws flavor and gelatin from the bones without clouding the stock. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and fine particles into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, sage, thyme, summer savory):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sage, thyme, summer savory. 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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