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Stock for Good Gravies

A clear stock made from equal parts meat and ham, vegetables, and water, finished with a teaspoon of meat extract or glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Stock for Good Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the stock

  1. Place the meat and ham in a pot with vegetables.

  2. Add 1 quart of cold water and cover the pot.

  3. Skim the surface and simmer gently for several hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the stock, discarding the solids.

  2. While hot, stir in 1 teaspoon of extract of meat or a bit of glaze.

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. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and ham
Release savory flavor and gelatin into the liquid as they simmer, giving the stock body.
Vegetables
Add aromatic flavor to the stock as they simmer.
Cold water
Acts as the cooking liquid that slowly draws flavor out of the meat, ham and vegetables.

The step that matters

Skim and simmer gently. Letting the stock boil rather than simmer breaks up fat and impurities into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy. Gentle heat and skimming keep the stock clear and clean-tasting.

“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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