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Soup

White Stock

A clear stock made from veal, ox heel, calf head, old fowl, poultry trimmings, ham, onions, celery, mace, simmered for five hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

White Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the veal, ox heel, or calf’s head, old fowl, and trimmings into pieces.

  2. Add the ham, roasted onions, celery, and mace.

  3. Pour in enough water to cover the ingredients.

  4. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for 5 hours.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Contributes gelatin and body to the stock as it simmers slowly.
Old fowl
Adds deep poultry flavour and collagen that enriches the stock.
Ham
Adds savoury depth and a meaty background flavour to the stock.
Roasted onions
Add sweet, caramelised aroma and colour to the finished stock.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, vegetal aromatic background to the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the stock at a gentle simmer. A hard, rolling boil agitates the liquid and emulsifies fat and impurities into the stock, making it cloudy. A slow simmer keeps the stock clear while collagen from the bones and meat gradually dissolves into gelatin.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, meat, onion, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, meat, onion, celery. 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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