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The Stock-pot

A hearty stock made with bones, bread crusts, bacon, vegetables, rice, and spices simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

The Stock-pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a large pot with 6 quarts of water and place it by the fire.

  2. Add all saved scraps: bones, bread crusts, bacon, vegetables, and rice.

  3. Include a few fresh bones from the butcher.

  4. Chop and add the turnip, carrot, parsnip, and onion in equal amounts.

Season and simmer

  1. Stir in brown sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, cloves, mace, and allspice.

  2. Simmer the mixture for several hours to develop flavor.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 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

Bones of cold meat
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the water as they simmer.
Fresh bones (purchased)
Add extra body and richness to the stock.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps draw minerals and flavor out of the bones.
Onion
Contributes sweet, aromatic depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for several hours. A hard boil makes stock cloudy and greasy, while a slow simmer lets collagen from the bones dissolve gradually into a clear, well-flavored liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, rice, turnip, carrot, parsnip, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, rice, turnip, carrot, parsnip, sugar. 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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