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To Clarify the Stock for Clear Soups

A method to clarify stock using finely minced beef, egg whites, eggshells, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Clarify the Stock for Clear Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef very finely.

  2. Slightly beat the egg whites and shells.

Clarify

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the minced beef, egg whites, eggshells, and stock. Mix well.

  2. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

  3. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the contents through a clean soup cloth dipped in scalding water and wrung dry.

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. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw lean beef
Its minced protein gathers impurities and clouds into a raft that clarifies the stock.
Egg whites
They coagulate with heat and bind to particles, trapping cloudiness so it can be strained out.
Eggshells
Their fine particles add surface area that helps capture cloudy matter during the simmer.
Stock
The liquid being clarified, so its flavor carries through once the solids are removed.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally. Stirring prevents sticking to the pan bottom, while gentle heat lets the egg-protein raft form and hold impurities. Boiling hard would break the raft and leave the stock cloudy.

“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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