Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Stock

A clear stock made by simmering carrots, onions, turnip, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, and spices in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Stock

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 ↓

Vegetable Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the onions, turnips, and carrots into thin slices and the celery into small pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  3. Add the vegetables and fry gently for 40 minutes, keeping the stewpan covered.

  4. Shred the lettuce.

Simmer and strain

  1. When the vegetables are cooked, add the shredded lettuce along with the sliced tomatoes, herbs, seasonings, and water.

  2. Bring gently to a boil.

  3. Skim off any scum.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  5. Strain the stock and it is ready for 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour during the gentle frying.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the finished stock.
Lettuce
Adds a mild, fresh vegetable flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables gently with the lid on. Low heat with a covered pan softens the vegetables and draws out their flavour without browning them. High heat or an uncovered pan would brown them, giving a darker, more bitter stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, tomato, celery, lettuce, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, tomato, celery, lettuce, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes