Why it works: Beef and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,729 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Stock for Soups
Ingredients
Directions
Break the bones and cut the meat into pieces.
Add the bacon or ham to the beef.
Cover with water and simmer for several hours to extract flavor.
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.
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Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,729 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef
- Its bones and meat release gelatin and savory flavor into the stock as it simmers.
- Bacon or ham
- Adds smoky, salty depth to the stock as its fat and flavor render into the liquid.
The step that matters
Simmering gently for several hours. Simmering slowly, rather than boiling hard, extracts flavor and collagen from the bones and meat while keeping the stock clear. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the stock cloudy and greasy.
“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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