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Whoown Stock

A savory stock made from chicken bones, ham or bacon, vegetables, butter, peppercorns, clove, salt, and water, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Whoown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and peel the vegetables.

  2. Heat the fat in a large saucepan.

  3. Chop or break the bones into small pieces and drain the vegetables thoroughly.

Brown the bones and vegetables

  1. Add the fat, herbs, and vegetables to the hot fat, cover, and fry gently until browned, stirring occasionally.

Simmer the stock

  1. Add the cold water, salt, peppercorns, and clove, bringing it gently to a boil while skimming off any scum.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for about 4 to 5 hours, removing any fat that rises to 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Chicken bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock during long simmering.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky depth and savoury flavour to the stock.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma, and browns to deepen the stock's colour.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock.
Butter or sweet dripping
Carries flavour and helps the bones and vegetables brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after bringing to a boil. A hard boil churns fat and fine particles into the liquid, making the stock cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer keeps it clear, and skimming fat and scum as it rises produces a cleaner, better-tasting stock.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, ham, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, ham, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter. 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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