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Soup Stock

A beef and optional veal stock made by browning meat and vegetables, simmering for hours, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Soup Stock

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the meat and vegetables (except the greens) in butter.

  2. Add 3 quarts of cold water, Worcestershire sauce, salt, red pepper, and a lump of sugar browned in an iron spoon over the fire.

  3. Reduce the mixture by half through slow boiling for about 4 hours.

  4. Strain the stock through a sieve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the stock body.
Onions
Browning them in butter builds sweet, deep savory flavor in the stock.
Butter
Browning fat that helps develop color and roasted flavor in the meat and vegetables.
Lump sugar
Caramelized in the iron spoon, it adds color and a subtle sweetness to the stock.

The step that matters

Slow boiling for about 4 hours. A gentle, slow boil reduces the stock by half while extracting flavor and gelatin without making it cloudy. Boiling hard can emulsify fat and cloud the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, sauce):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, sauce. 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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