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Common Stock, or Grand Stock for General Purposes

A large pot of veal and beef stock simmered with root vegetables and salt, strained and cooled for later use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Common Stock, or Grand Stock for General Purposes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat from the legs of veal, keeping it separate from the beef.

  2. Break up the bones and place them in a large stock pot half full of cold water.

Make the stock

  1. Add the inferior pieces of beef to the pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface well and add carrots, turnips, celery, and leeks.

  3. Use salt sparingly and avoid spices or herbs.

  4. Simmer gently for 7 hours, then strain through a broth napkin into large basins to cool.

Store

  1. Store in the larder for the next day's use.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Veal legs
Bones and meat provide gelatin and rich flavour for a full-bodied stock.
Gravy beef
Adds deep beefy flavour and body as it simmers slowly in the pot.
Leg of beef and knuckles of veal
Bones release gelatin, giving the stock body and a silky mouthfeel.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock's background flavour.
Celery
Contributes aromatic vegetable flavour that rounds out the stock.

The step that matters

Skim the surface well. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that would otherwise cloud the stock and make it greasy. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer also prevents emulsifying fat and cloudiness.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, carrot, turnip, leek):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, carrot, turnip, leek. 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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