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Shin of Beef Stock for Gravies

A beef stock made by simmering shin of beef with water, salt, herbs, peppercorns, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,969 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Shin of Beef Stock for Gravies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shin

  1. Break the bone of the shin in one or two places and remove the marrow.

  2. Clarify the marrow if not used immediately. Store the clarified marrow for future use.

Make the stock

  1. Combine 6 lbs of shin of beef with 9 pints of cold water in a large pot. Add 1 oz of coarse sea salt, a large bunch of savory herbs, 1 teaspoon of peppercorns, and 2 blades of mace.

  2. Stew gently for 6 to 7 hours, or longer until the meat is in fragments.

Store and maintain

  1. Store the stock in a cool place.

  2. Boil softly for 2 to 3 minutes every 2 to 3 days.

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 + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides meat, connective tissue and bone that release body and flavour into the stock during long gentle cooking.
Cold water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour and gelatin from the beef and bones.
Savory herbs
Add aromatic, herbal flavour to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 6 to 7 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin while the stock stays clear. Vigorous boiling emulsifies fat and fat particles cloud the liquid.

“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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