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Meat Stock

A savory beef stock made with carrots, onions, celery, herbs, and clarified beef suet, simmered for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Meat Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. In a stewpan, combine carrots, onions, celery, parsley, thyme, marjoram, garlic, and beef suet.

  2. Fry the mixture until slightly colored.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add water, sugar, salt, pepper, cloves, allspice, and green peas.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Remove fat and strain the broth into a basin for later 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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the stock a richer mouthfeel.
Onions
Frying them builds browned, savoury depth in the base of the stock.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body as they cook slowly in the water.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury background flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the mixture until slightly colored. Browning the vegetables and suet through the Maillard reaction creates deeper, roasted flavour. Frying too briefly leaves the stock flat, while frying too long can scorch the solids and make the broth bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, marjoram, clove, garlic):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, marjoram, clove, garlic. 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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