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Stock for Clear Soups

A beef stock made by simmering bones, vegetables, and spices for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stock for Clear Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and place in a saucepan.

  2. Pour the cold water over the beef and bring to a boil over high heat.

  3. Once boiling, skim the surface carefully, then add the salt and skim again.

  4. Add the chopped celery, whole peppers, cloves, soaked onion, chopped carrot, and turnip.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for 5 hours.

Clarify and strain

  1. Strain the stock and let it cool, then remove the fat.

  2. Pour the stock into a clean saucepan and warm it gently.

  3. In a bowl, mix the whites of 2 eggs with a little pepper, salt, and ½ cup water.

  4. Add the egg mixture to the stock and whisk until it boils.

  5. Let it boil for a few minutes, then strain through a cloth.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Gives the stock its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Eggs (in the method)
Egg whites collect fine particles as they cook, clearing the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white mixture and boiling. Whisk the egg mixture in before the stock boils, then let it boil gently. The coagulating whites trap cloudy particles, which a cloth then removes. Boiling too hard can break up the raft and cloud the stock again.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, turnip, carrot, pepper, clove, onion. 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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