Name: Consomme or Plain Meat Stock for Soup
Ingredients: 4 pounds fresh uncooked beef and broken bones; 1 gallon cold water; 2 teaspoons coarse sea salt; 1 quart boiling water; any desired vegetables; salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Consomme or Plain Meat Stock for Soup

serves 6

Ingredients

4 pounds fresh uncooked beef and broken bones
1 gallon cold water
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
1 quart boiling water
any desired vegetables
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Make the stock

Place the beef and broken bones in a large pot and add the cold water.
Slowly bring to a boil over low heat, then reduce to a simmer for 3 to 4 hours until the liquid reduces by half.
Stir in the salt, then strain the stock and cool it in a covered earthenware dish.
Once cooled, remove the fat from the top.

Make the soup

To make soup for six, take 1 quart of stock and add 1 quart of boiling water and any desired vegetables.
Boil for 3 hours, then season with salt and pepper.

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.

Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 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

Fresh uncooked beef and broken bones: Long simmering draws flavour and body from the meat and bones into the water.
Cold water: Starting in cold water lets the stock extract flavour gradually as it heats.

“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.