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Brown Stock

A hearty brown stock made from bones, ham or bacon, onions, carrots, turnip, celery, butter, peppercorns, cloves, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and peel the vegetables.

  2. Heat the fat in a large stewpan.

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

Brown and simmer

  1. Place the bones, herbs, and vegetables in the hot fat, cover, and fry gently until browned, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add cold water, salt, peppercorns, and cloves; bring to a gentle boil and remove any scum that rises.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for 5 to 6 hours.

  4. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface during simmering.

  5. Strain the stock before using.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the stock body.
Onions
Caramelise while frying, adding sweetness and deep colour to the finished stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock's flavour base.
Butter or sweet dripping
Conducts heat for frying and carries flavour, helping the vegetables and bones brown.

The step that matters

Fry the bones and vegetables until well browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds the deep colour and roasted flavour that define a brown stock. Pale frying yields a weaker, washed-out result, so the bones and vegetables need time in the hot fat.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, chicken, ham, onion, carrot, 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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