Why it works: Meat and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,449 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Stock for Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the stock
Place the meat and bones in a pot with cold water, without adding salt.
Heat slowly until it reaches boiling point, then skim off any foam.
Reduce heat and let it simmer gently for 6 hours.
Add a little pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.
Strain and chill
Strain the stock into a stone jar and let it cool.
Remove all grease from the surface once cooled.
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.
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Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,449 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Meat and bones
- Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long, gentle simmering.
- Cold water
- Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the bones.
The step that matters
Heat slowly to boiling and skim the foam. Starting in cold water and heating gently lets proteins coagulate and rise as foam, which skimming removes. A hard boil too early emulsifies fat and impurities into the liquid, making the stock cloudy and greasy.
“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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