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Soup or Stock From One Pound of Beef

A simple beef stock made by simmering minced beef in water, seasoned with salt, other seasonings, and optional roasted onions or burnt sugar for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Soup or Stock From One Pound of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine the minced beef and cold water.

  2. Heat the mixture slowly until it begins to boil, about 2-3 hours.

  3. Once boiling, let it boil briskly for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquid through a towel.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt and other seasonings to taste.

  2. For a darker color, add roasted onions or burnt sugar.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat flavor and gelatin-rich body as it breaks down in the water.
Cold water
Extracts flavor and collagen from the beef gradually when heated slowly from cold.
Roasted onions or burnt sugar
Adds a deeper brown color to the stock.

The step that matters

Heating slowly from cold. Starting with cold water and heating gradually lets proteins and fats coagulate and rise to be skimmed, and draws flavor out of the meat. Boiling hard too early can emulsify fat into the liquid and leave the stock cloudy.

“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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