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Beef Stock

A vegetable and tomato enriched beef stock with a butter‑flour reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef Stock

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, boil the carrot, turnip, beet, and onions in the beef stock for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add the tomatoes and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Strain again and season with salt and pepper.

Make the roux and finish

  1. In a separate saucepan, heat the butter until light brown.

  2. Add the flour to the hot butter and mix thoroughly.

  3. Remove from heat, add the sugar, and stir until it boils.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes and strain.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that is browned with flour to form a roux, adding nutty flavour and thickening the stock.
Flour
Starch that thickens the browned butter into a roux, giving the finished stock body.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and savoury depth, balancing the sweetness of the vegetables.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds during simmering, building the stock's savoury base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Heating the butter until light brown. Butter that is too dark or burns turns bitter, and flour cooked too briefly keeps a raw, pasty taste. Stirring steadily keeps the roux even in colour and flavour.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, beef, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, beef, butter, flour, sugar. 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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