Skip to main content
Main

Brown Soup Stock

A brown soup stock made by browning meat, simmering with vegetables, and skimming fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Brown Soup Stock

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 ↓

Brown Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wipe the meat and cut it into 1-inch cubes.

  2. Brown about one-third of the meat in a frying pan with a little suet and the onion.

  3. Place the bone and remaining meat in a kettle.

  4. Add 2 quarts of cold water and let it stand for 1 hour.

Simmer the stock

  1. Add 2 cups of water to the meat in the frying pan and boil for 1 minute.

  2. Add the mixture to the kettle.

  3. Add the salt, pepper, diced carrots, turnip, and bay leaf.

  4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Cook in a slow cooker for 8 hours.

Finish

  1. Cool the stock.

  2. Skim the fat from the top before using.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup meat and bone
Releases flavor and body into the water during long cooking.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it browns with the meat.
Carrot
Contributes mild sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic background flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Skim the fat from the top before using. Fat that rises during simmering stays on the surface as the stock cools and can make the broth greasy. Chilling or skimming removes most of it before use.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, 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.

More soup stock recipes

Clear 33White 28Brown 9Clarified 7 See all 71 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes