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Brown Stock

A beef stock made by simmering bones, shin, carrots, turnip, onions, and cloves in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine beef bones and cold water in a large pan.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off foam, then simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Finely chop the shin of beef and fry it in hot beef dripping until browned.

  4. Add the fried beef, sliced onions, carrot, turnip, and cloves to the stock and simmer for 3 more hours.

  5. Strain the stock through a fine sieve and skim off fat from the surface.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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

Beef bones
Release gelatin and collagen into the water, giving the stock body and a rich mouthfeel.
Shin of beef
Browning in hot dripping builds deeper, roasted meaty flavour that carries into the stock.
Beef dripping
Conducts heat for browning the beef and adds rich fat that carries flavour.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury depth as they cook slowly into the stock.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aromatic body to the stock.

The step that matters

Skim off foam and fat. Foam from the initial boil and fat on the surface can make the stock cloudy and greasy. Skimming early and straining at the end keeps it clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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