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Medium Stock

A beef stock made by simmering meat, water, egg whites, shells, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Medium Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine 2 pounds of beef with 3 pints of water in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for at least 1 hour.

Clarify and strain

  1. Whisk together 3 egg whites and their shells until just before boiling.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the stock and stop stirring immediately.

  3. Leave the stock partially uncovered for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the stock through a fine sieve, adding a lump of sugar before the second straining if desired.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  3. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water as it simmers slowly.
Egg whites
Coagulate and trap suspended particles, clarifying the stock as they rise.
Egg shells
Add calcium and extra surface area that help bind particles during clarification.

The step that matters

Add the egg mixture and stop stirring. Stirring after the egg whites are added breaks up the forming raft and mixes particles back into the stock. Keeping the stock still lets the coagulated egg carry impurities to the top, leaving it clear.

“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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