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A vegetable stock made with onions, celery, mace, cinnamon, salt, and pepper, simmered and chilled to form a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Stock

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine onions, celery, mace, and cinnamon in a pot.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the stock through a fine sieve into a large bowl.

Chill and store

  1. Leave it in a cool place overnight.

  2. Skim the fat off the cooled stock, which will be a stiff jelly.

  3. Transfer the jelly to a deep dish and scrape off any sediment at the bottom.

  4. Store in a stone jar in a cool place.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main savoury, sweet base flavour of the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the stock.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the stock.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aromatic note to the stock.

The step that matters

Skim the fat off the cooled stock. Fat floats and sets on top as the stock cools. Removing it cleanly once cold gives a clear, firm jelly; skimming while warm leaves greasy flavour behind.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, cinnamon, pepper. 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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