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Four Quarts of White Stock

A clear veal stock made by simmering veal, cowheel, fowl, vegetables, spices, and herbs for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Four Quarts of White Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In an iron pot, combine the veal, cowheel, fowl, turnip, onions, lettuce, mace, nutmeg, ham, salt, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add the water and bring to a gentle simmer.

  3. Skim the surface frequently for 6 hours.

Strain and skim

  1. Strain the stock into an earthen dish.

  2. Once cooled, remove the fat from the surface.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Provides gelatin and meaty flavor, giving the stock body as it simmers.
Cowheel
Adds collagen that dissolves into gelatin, giving the finished stock a richer body.
Old fowl
Contributes savory flavor and additional collagen to the broth during long simmering.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty depth that rounds out the flavor of the stock.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor into the liquid as they simmer.

The step that matters

Skim the surface frequently for 6 hours. Simmering brings denatured proteins and fat to the surface as foam. Removing them regularly keeps the stock clear and prevents greasy, cloudy broth. Letting it boil instead would emulsify the fat into the liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, turnip, onion, lettuce, nutmeg, ham):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, turnip, onion, lettuce, nutmeg, ham. 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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