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Stoneware Stock-pot

A hearty ox-tail stock simmered with carrots, turnips, bay leaf, peppercorns, and sea salt, served with toasted bread and marrow-fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stoneware Stock-pot

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the meat and cut the ox-tail into small joints.

  2. Place the joints in a stoneware pot with water and bring to a slow boil. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Trim, cleanse, and pare the vegetables; cut the carrots and turnips into convenient shapes.

Simmer

  1. Add the vegetables, bay leaf, and peppercorns to the pot and let simmer gently for about 2.5 hours. Add salt to taste during cooking.

Serve

  1. To serve, cut the meat into equal portions and place in small pots with the vegetables.

  2. Serve toasted bread spread with marrow-fat separately.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together831 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox-tail
Gives the broth rich flavour and body as its meat and collagen soften during slow simmering.
Marrow-fat
Adds richness and fat to the toasted bread served alongside the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth as they cook.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender texture to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum before simmering. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or greasy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, bread):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, bread. 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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