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Vegetable Stock

A clear stock made from carrots, onions, turnip, tomatoes, celery, lettuce, herbs, and butter, simmered for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Vegetable Stock

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Vegetable Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the onions, turnips, and carrots into thin slices and the celery into small pieces.

  2. Shred the lettuce.

Make the stock

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a stewpan, add the vegetables, and fry gently for about 30 minutes, keeping the stewpan covered.

  2. When the vegetables are cooked, add the lettuce, sliced tomatoes, herbs, seasonings, and water.

  3. Bring gently to a boil, skim off the scum as it rises, then cover and simmer gently for about 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain the stock, and it is ready to use.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften and release their flavour into the stock.
Onions
Provide savoury depth and sweetness as they caramelise gently in the fat.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background flavour to the stock.
Butter or other good fat
Carries flavour from the vegetables and helps them soften gently without browning.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum as the stock comes to a boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface; removing it early keeps the stock clear and free of bitter or cloudy off-flavours.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, tomato, celery, lettuce, parsley, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, tomato, celery, lettuce, parsley, thyme. 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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