Why it works: Beef and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,969 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓
Shin of Beef Stock
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break the bone of the shin in one or two places and remove the marrow.
If not using the marrow immediately, clarify and store it for later.
Make the stock
Combine the shin of beef with 9 pints of cold water in a large pot.
Stew gently for 6 to 7 hours, or longer until the meat is in fragments.
Add the savoury herbs, salt, peppercorns, and mace during cooking.
Store
Keep the stock in a cool place and boil softly for 2-3 minutes every few days.
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 + macetop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,969 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Shin of beef
- Bone and connective tissue release gelatin and body into the broth during long stewing.
- Cold water
- Extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat and bones as it slowly heats.
- Savoury herbs
- Add aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth as it cooks.
- Peppercorns
- Add a mild, warm pungency that rounds out the broth's flavour.
- Mace
- Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the broth.
The step that matters
Stew gently for 6 to 7 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer slowly breaks down collagen into gelatin without emulsifying fat into a cloudy broth. Boiling hard makes the stock murky and can toughen the meat, so the heat must stay low and steady.
“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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