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Common Stock

A clear stock made by simmering bones, giblets, trimmings, and vegetables with herbs and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Common Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine bones, giblets, trimmings, and vegetables in a large pot.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and add herbs.

  3. Cover with water and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for several hours to extract flavors.

Make the thickening

  1. For thickening, melt butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Gradually add flour, stirring until smooth and velvety.

  3. Cook slowly until the mixture is well combined.

Finish

  1. Add the thickening to the stock as needed.

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

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the thickening with butter, giving the stock body as it cooks.
Butter
Melts with the flour to make a roux that thickens the stock smoothly.
Bones from cooked meat
Release gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, enriching the stock.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stock as it simmers.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the simmered stock.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour thickening slowly. Cooking flour in fat gelatinizes starch gradually and removes raw flour taste. Heating too fast or skipping the slow cook can leave lumps or a pasty flavor, and the thickening may not blend smoothly into the stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, veal, carrot, celery, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, veal, carrot, celery, pepper, butter, flour. 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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