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Soup

Brown Soup Stock

A stock made from meat, bones, vegetables, peppercorns, cloves, salt, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, and optional celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Brown Soup Stock

Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Brown Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place half the meat and the bones in the cold water.

  2. Brown the remaining meat and vegetables in a pan, then add them to the pot.

  3. Simmer for several hours to develop flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Meat and bones (in the method)
Provide the main flavor and body of the stock as they simmer in water.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth when browned before simmering.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the stock.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and earthy aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the meat and vegetables. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates deeper, roasted flavors and a richer color in the finished stock. Pale vegetables added without browning give a flatter, less developed broth.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley. 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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