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Stock, and Clear Soups

A clear stock made by simmering meat, bones, vegetables, herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stock, and Clear Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the meat and bones in a large pot and cover with water.

  2. Slowly heat the pot, avoiding boiling at first.

Skim and flavour

  1. Skim off the scum and fat frequently, adding a cup of cold water to help.

  2. Once skimming is complete, add the vegetables and herbs.

  3. Simmer uncovered until the vegetables are tender, then remove them.

  4. Maintain a simmering heat under the pot for about 4 to 5 hours to extract flavor.

Season

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and bone
Provides the main body and gelatin-rich depth of flavour in the stock.
Vegetables
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stock as they simmer.
Flavouring herbs
Add aromatic notes such as thyme and bay leaf to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Slow heating and skimming. Bringing the pot up to heat slowly and boiling gently keeps the liquid clear, because a rolling boil emulsifies fat and scum into the broth and makes it cloudy. Frequent skimming removes the coagulated impurities as they rise.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, beef, carrot, celery, thyme, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, beef, carrot, celery, thyme, pepper. 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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