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Stock From Bones

A beef stock made by simmering bones, vegetables, herbs, salt, and sugar for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stock From Bones

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base stock

  1. Break the bones into 6 or more pieces and place them in a stock pot with 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 5 to 6 hours.

  3. Strain the stock, which should yield about 2 quarts.

  4. Let the strained stock cool for several hours or overnight.

  5. Skim off the fat once cold.

Add vegetables and finish

  1. Return the stock to the pot and add the turnip, carrot, onions, sweet herbs, parsley, and celery or celery seed.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours, adding boiling water to maintain 2 quarts.

  3. Add a little salt and a large lump of sugar while boiling.

  4. Strain the stock into a jar for storage.

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 + 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. Turnip + carrottop 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

Beef bones
Release gelatin and meaty flavour into the water during long simmering, giving body to the stock.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic depth to the simmered stock.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and mild earthy flavour to the stock.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the liquid.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat once cold. Fat that stays in the stock turns greasy and can cloud its flavour. Chilling solidifies the fat on the surface so it lifts off cleanly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, parsley, celery, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, parsley, celery, sugar. 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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