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Rich Stock

A rich stock made from beef shin, veal knuckle, and assorted vegetables simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rich Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Put the meat and chopped bones into a pot with cold water, allowing 1 pint for each pound of meat.

  3. Add an extra pint of water to account for evaporation.

  4. Bring the mixture gradually to a boil.

  5. Add salt and skim off any foam.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the carrot, onion, leeks, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, and peppercorns.

  2. Clean all vegetables, and brush and scrape the carrot without peeling unless necessary.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer the stock for at least 6 hours, making sure it does not boil too rapidly.

  2. Strain the stock through a sieve, discarding the solids.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Meat releases savory flavor and juices into the liquid during the long simmer.
Veal knuckle
Collagen in the bones converts to gelatin, giving the stock body and a silky mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks slowly in the liquid.
Bay leaf
Contributes a subtle herbal aroma to the finished stock.

The step that matters

Keep the stock at a gentle simmer. Vigorous boiling agitates fat and fine particles into the liquid, which makes the stock cloudy and greasy. A slow, steady simmer lets fat rise and be skimmed while the gelatin is drawn out cleanly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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