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White Stock

A clear broth made from veal, ox heel or calf’s head, fowl, poultry or game trimmings, ham, onions, celery, mace, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

White Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal, ox heel, or calf’s head, old fowl, and any poultry or game trimmings into pieces.

Simmer

  1. Add the lean ham, onions, celery, and mace to the pot.

  2. Pour in enough water to cover the ingredients.

  3. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for 5 hours.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle or serag
Contributes gelatin and body to the stock as it simmers slowly.
Ox heel or calf’s head
Adds collagen that dissolves into gelatin, giving the stock body and mouthfeel.
Old fowl
Provides deep poultry flavour and additional collagen for a richer stock.
Lean ham
Lends savoury, salty depth to the background of the stock.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook down into the liquid.
Celery
Adds a fresh, vegetal aroma that rounds out the stock's flavour.

The step that matters

Keeping the simmer gentle. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and clouds the stock, while a gentle simmer lets collagen dissolve and fat rise for skimming, producing a clearer, more flavourful result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, meat, onion, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, meat, onion, celery. 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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