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Brown Stock

A beef stock made by simmering bones, meat, vegetables, and seasonings for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. Put the bones and cold water into a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Simmer for 3 hours.

Brown and add the flavourings

  1. Finely chop the beef.

  2. Fry the chopped beef in the hot beef dripping until browned.

  3. Slice the onions and fry the sliced onions.

  4. Add the onions and cleaned, sliced vegetables to the stock.

  5. Simmer for an additional 3 hours.

Finish the stock

  1. Strain the stock.

  2. Remove the fat once cooled.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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 bones
Release gelatin and body into the water during long simmering, giving the stock richness.
Shin of beef
Frying until browned adds deep roasted flavour to the finished stock.
Beef dripping
Fat used to brown the beef, carrying flavour into the stock.
Onions
Frying until browned adds sweetness and deeper colour to the stock.

The step that matters

Fry the chopped beef until browned. Browning drives Maillard reactions that create roasted, savoury flavour. Pale beef gives a flat, grey-tasting stock, so the meat needs real colour before it goes into the pot.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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