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Soup Stock

A quick beef vegetable stock made with carrots, onions, celery, turnip, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Soup Stock

Why it works: Turnip and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 184 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef, carrot, onion, celery, and turnip into slices.

  2. Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan.

  3. Pour the water over the mixture.

  4. Sprinkle salt over it.

Make the stock

  1. Boil for 15 minutes, then remove from heat.

  2. Skim off any fat.

  3. Strain the stock through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Cut stale bread into thin slices.

  2. Place the slices in a tureen.

  3. Pour the stock over the bread.

  4. Chop the chervil finely and sprinkle it over the stock.

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. Turnip + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + cherviltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw beef
Releases savoury flavour and body into the stock as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Onion
Builds savoury depth and aroma in the stock.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the stock.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot stock, becoming soft and moist as it is served.

The step that matters

Skim off any fat.. Fat rises to the surface as the stock simmers. Leaving it in makes the broth greasy and heavy on the palate, so it should be skimmed off before straining.

Swap the chervil

The recipe marks chervil as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, clove, bread):

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

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