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Soup

Plain Stock

A clear broth made by simmering beef leg or shin with vegetables and optional meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Plain Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef leg or shin thoroughly.

  2. Cover the beef with water in a large pot.

Simmer

  1. Boil slowly, skimming off any scum that forms.

  2. Add salt to taste, along with the carrot, celery, turnips, and onions.

  3. Simmer gently for 4 to 5 hours to avoid wasting the liquid.

Finish

  1. Strain the stock before using.

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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef leg or shin
Breaks down over the long simmer, releasing gelatin and rich meaty flavour into the liquid for body.
Onions
Add savoury depth and a mild sweetness as they soften and release their flavour into the stock.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and colour to the stock.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, herbal notes that round out the stock's flavour.
Turnips
Add a mild, earthy sweetness to the stock as they cook.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling. A hard, rolling boil agitates fat and fine particles into the liquid, making the stock cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer lets them rise to be skimmed off, giving a clearer, cleaner stock while the collagen in the bones and meat still dissolves slowly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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