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Common Maigre Stock for Soups and Sauces

A stock made from dry peas, vegetables, herbs, and a carp's body, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Common Maigre Stock for Soups and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the dry peas.

  2. Boil the dry peas in water for several hours, adding more water as needed.

Make the vegetable base

  1. In a separate pan, sauté chopped carrots and onions in butter until half browned.

  2. Add parsley roots, leeks, mushrooms, whole small onions, thyme, mint, and a bay leaf to the sautéed vegetables.

  3. Moisten with a little hot water.

  4. Simmer over low heat.

  5. After an hour, add more hot water.

  6. Increase the heat.

  7. Shake the pot constantly until the contents are colored but not burnt.

Combine and finish

  1. Mix in the clear pea purée.

  2. Boil gently for 1-2 hours.

  3. Strain through a tammy to remove grease.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Dry peas
Break down during long boiling to give the stock body and a thick, earthy flavour.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the sautéed vegetables brown.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they caramelise in the pan.
Onions
Browning adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Leeks
Contribute a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the base.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, umami depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Shake the pot constantly until the contents are colored but not burnt. Browning the vegetables builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, but sugars scorch quickly once they darken too far, which turns the stock bitter.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, parsley, leek, mushroom, thyme):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, parsley, leek, mushroom, thyme. 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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