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General Rules for Soup Stock

A method for making a clear soup stock from meat, bones, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

General Rules for Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the meat and bones in cold water for 1 hour to extract juices.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces and wash clean.

  3. In a pot, combine the soaked meat, bones, and 1 quart of cold water.

  4. Add salt, pepper, cloves, celery, parsley, onion, carrot, turnip, bay leaf, sage, summer savory, thyme, and marjoram.

Simmer and colour

  1. Simmer on low heat for 6 to 8 hours without boiling hard.

  2. Do not remove the scum while cooking; it contains albumen.

  3. Brown part of the meat and vegetables in fat for a dark-brown stock.

  4. Add browned sugar or caramel for color if desired.

Finish

  1. Strain the stock.

  2. Let it cool until the fat forms a cake on top.

  3. Remove the fat.

  4. Reheat the stock before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Meat and bones
Release juices and gelatin that give the stock body and savory flavor.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens during the long simmer.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and body to the finished stock.
Browned sugar or caramel
Deepens the stock's colour and adds a slightly bittersweet, toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling hard. A hard boil makes the stock cloudy and emulsifies fat into it. Gentle heat over a long time extracts flavour while keeping the liquid clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, clove, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip. 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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