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Essence of Meat

A stock made by boiling veal, mutton, and beef for several hours, then seasoning with salt, pepper, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Essence of Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine veal, mutton, and beef in a jar without any water.

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan filled with water, ensuring no water enters the jar.

Make the stock

  1. Boil for 3 hours, then remove the meat and bruise it in a mortar.

  2. Return the bruised meat to the jar and boil for an additional 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve, then add salt, pepper, and wine if desired.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Veal + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Provides rich flavour and body from its bones and connective tissue as it simmers.
Mutton
Adds deeper, savoury meat flavour to the stock.
Beef
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the stock.

The step that matters

Keeping water out of the jar. Sealing the jar in a water bath gently heats the meat without diluting it. If water enters the jar, the stock becomes watery and weaker in flavour.

“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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