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A Good Brown Stock

A savory brown stock made with beef, veal, butter, and vegetables, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Good Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef and veal into pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a large stewpan over medium heat.

Brown the vegetables and meat

  1. Add the meat, water, and salt, then stir in the onions, turnip, carrots, celery, leeks, cloves, and mace.

  2. Cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until browned and glazed.

Simmer and strain

  1. Fill the pan with cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer gently for 3-4 hours, skimming frequently.

  3. Strain the stock through a fine sieve and it's ready for use.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock during long simmering.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin and body, giving the finished stock a richer mouthfeel.
Onions
Caramelise during browning, adding sweetness and depth of colour and flavour.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Cook over high heat until browned and glazed. Browning the meat and vegetables through the Maillard reaction creates deep, roasted flavour compounds. Pale, under-browned ingredients produce a weaker, flatter stock with less colour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, butter, turnip, carrot, celery, leek):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, butter, turnip, carrot, celery, leek. 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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