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First Stock for Clear Soup

A clear beef stock made by simmering beef shin, vegetables, herbs, and peppercorns in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

First Stock for Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and place in a saucepan with the cold water; soak for 30 minutes.

  2. Put the pot on the stove with a little salt and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the sliced vegetables, herbs, and peppercorns tied in a piece of muslin.

  2. Simmer for 4 hours, then strain into a basin and skim off the fat when cold.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 slowly in long simmering, releasing gelatin and meaty flavour into the liquid.
Cold water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the meat and vegetables.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the stock as they simmer.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stock as it cooks.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat when cold. Fat that is not removed can make the stock greasy and cloudy. Once cooled, the fat rises and solidifies on the surface, so it lifts off cleanly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, parsley, thyme, carrot, turnip, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, parsley, thyme, carrot, turnip, pepper. 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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