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Soup

Stock for Gravy or Soup

A stock made from veal, beef, bacon, carrots, onions, turnips, celery, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 for Gravy or Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the veal, beef, and bacon, and place them in a stewpan.

Make the stock

  1. Add the carrots, onions, turnips, celery, pepper, salt, and water.

  2. Stew the mixture until the meat is tender, avoiding browning.

Use

  1. Use the stock for soup or gravy 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the liquid, giving the stock body.
Lean beef
Adds meaty depth to the stock as it simmers slowly.
Lean gammon of bacon
Contributes salty, smoky flavor that seasons the stock as it cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the liquid.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and a rounded background flavor.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture until the meat is tender, avoiding browning.. Gentle, slow simmering keeps the liquid clear and the flavor clean. Browning or a rapid boil can make the stock cloudy and tint it darker, changing its taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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