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A Clear Brown Stock for Gravy-soup or Gravy

A clear brown stock made by simmering veal, beef, bacon, carrots, onions, turnips, celery, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Clear Brown Stock for Gravy-soup or Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the veal, beef, bacon, carrots, onions, turnips, celery, and water in a stew pan.

  2. Stew the mixture until the meat is tender, ensuring it does not brown.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Adds body and gelatin, giving the stock a rich mouthfeel as it simmers.
Lean beef
Contributes meaty flavor to the stock as it slowly releases its juices.
Gammon of bacon
Adds savory, salty depth to the stock's overall flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the liquid.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Stew without browning. Keeping the meat and vegetables below browning temperature preserves the pale, clear color of the stock. Browning creates darker, more intense flavors and can make the stock cloudy or muddy in color, which conflicts with the clear result this recipe aims for.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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