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Soup

Brown Stock

A beef stock made by browning shin of beef and vegetables, simmering for hours, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Brown Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and brown in 3.5 oz of butter.

  2. Clean and slice the vegetables.

  3. Fry the vegetables in the remaining butter until slightly browned.

Simmer and strain

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stock pot and simmer for 7 hours.

  2. Strain the stock through a sieve.

  3. Remove the fat when the stock is cold.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides collagen that breaks down into body and richness in the stock.
Onions
Browning and frying build sweet, deep savoury flavour in the stock.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness and aroma during long simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and aroma to the stock's background flavour.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the beef and vegetables and adds richness.

The step that matters

Brown the beef and vegetables well. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates deep, savoury flavours that a simmered stock cannot develop on its own. Pale meat or vegetables give a flat, washed-out stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, 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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