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Vegetable Stock

A clear broth made by simmering lentils, carrots, turnip, onion, celery, and optional apple peelings or vegetable cuttings in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Vegetable Stock

Why it works: Lentils and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, combine 4 quarts of water with 1 pint of lentils or less than 1 pint of haricots.

  2. Soak the lentils or haricots overnight if using them.

  3. Add 1 chopped carrot, 1 chopped turnip, 1 chopped onion, and 1 head of chopped celery.

  4. Include any clean apple peelings, cores, or fresh vegetable cuttings if desired.

Simmer and store

  1. Simmer the mixture for 4 hours.

  2. If not using the stock immediately, strain and store it, boiling it again each day.

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. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 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

Lentils
Break down during simmering to add body and thicken the stock slightly.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.
Onion
Contributes savory, aromatic flavor as it softens and releases its sugars.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory background flavor to the stock.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

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