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Vegetable Stock

A clear broth made by simmering carrots, onions, turnip, tomatoes, celery, lettuce, herbs, spices, butter, and water.

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. Slice the onions, turnips, and carrots thinly, and chop the celery into small pieces.

Make the stock

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan, add the vegetables, and sauté gently for 30 minutes with the lid on.

  2. Shred the lettuce and add it along with the sliced tomatoes, herbs, spices, and water to the stewpan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for 1.5 hours, then strain the stock.

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

Butter
Fat that carries flavour from the vegetables and helps them soften gently without browning.
Onions
Provide sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stock as they cook down.
Lettuce
Adds a mild, fresh vegetable flavour and a little extra body to the liquid.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a gentle boil and skim. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface; skimming them keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting. Boiling hard would emulsify fats and cloud the liquid, so keep the boil gentle.

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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