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Stock for Maigre Soup or Sauce

A vegetable stock made with carrots, turnips, onion, parsnip, celery, cabbage, parsley, cloves, salt, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stock for Maigre Soup or Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine the carrots, turnips, onion, parsnip, celery, cabbage, parsley, cloves, and salt.

  2. Add a large piece of butter and enough water to cover the vegetables.

  3. Let it stew until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Strain the stock through a fine sieve (tamis) for use.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide sweetness and body to the stock as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild, slightly sweet flavour and body to the stock.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the stock.

The step that matters

Let it stew until the vegetables are tender. Stewing gently until the vegetables are fully soft lets their flavour and body release into the water. Stopping early leaves a weak stock, and a hard boil can cloud it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, cabbage, parsley, clove):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, cabbage, parsley, clove. 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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