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Four Quarts of White Stock

A clear stock made by simmering veal knuckle, cow heel, fowl, turnip, onions, lettuce, mace, nutmeg, ham, salt, sweet herbs, and water for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Four Quarts of White Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In an iron pot, combine the knuckle of veal, cow heel, old fowl, turnip, onions, lettuce, mace, nutmeg, lean ham, salt, sweet herbs, and water.

  2. Simmer gently for 6 hours, skimming frequently.

  3. Strain the stock into an earthen dish.

Finish

  1. Once cold, remove the fat.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 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

Knuckle of veal
Releases gelatin and body into the stock as it simmers slowly.
Cow heel
Adds gelatin, giving the cooled stock a fuller, more set texture.
Old fowl
Contributes savory poultry flavor and additional gelatin to the broth.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty depth of flavor to the stock.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim frequently. A gentle simmer keeps the stock clear, while a hard boil emulsifies fat and proteins into it, making it cloudy. Skimming removes the foam that would otherwise cloud and sour the flavor.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, turnip, onion, lettuce, nutmeg, ham):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, turnip, onion, lettuce, nutmeg, ham. 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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