Skip to main content
Starter

Principles Stock

A stock made by simmering onions, carrot, mace, parsley, green onions, bay leaf, thyme, and common stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Principles Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the glaze

  1. In a stewpan, heat until the glaze turns reddish-brown, watching carefully to avoid burning.

Simmer and strain

  1. Once the desired color is achieved, fill the stewpan with common stock.

  2. Add the onions, carrot, mace, parsley, green onions, bay leaf, and thyme.

  3. Simmer gently for about 2 hours, skimming occasionally.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

  5. Remove any fat from the cooled stock before storing.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Release sweetness and savory flavor into the stock as they simmer.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock.
Green onions
Contribute aromatic, savory flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the glaze. Heating until reddish-brown caramelizes the sugars and proteins, adding color and deeper flavor, but the glaze turns bitter quickly if it burns, so watch it closely.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, carrot, parsley, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes