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 Op Beef Stock for Gravies
Ingredients
Directions
Make the stock
Place the shin of beef in a large pot with the cold water.
Add the coarse sea salt, savoury herbs, peppercorns, and mace.
Stew gently for 6 to 7 hours until the meat is tender and falls apart.
Finish and store
Remove any bones and clarify the stock if needed.
Store the stock in a clean, well-scalded container in a cool place.
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.
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Beef + macetop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Breaks down during long stewing, releasing gelatin and flavour into the liquid for body.
- Cold water
- Acts as the cooking liquid that slowly extracts flavour and gelatin from the meat and bones.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the stock and brings out the savoury flavour of the beef.
The step that matters
Stew gently for 6 to 7 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer, not a rolling boil, lets collagen convert to gelatin slowly while the stock stays clear. Boiling hard emulsifies fat and fragments the meat, clouding the stock.
“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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