Name: Stock and Seasoning
Ingredients: 2 pounds of meat and bones, cut into small bits; 2 quarts of cold water; 1 teaspoon of salt; ½ teaspoon of black pepper

Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stock and Seasoning

Ingredients

2 pounds of meat and bones, cut into small bits
2 quarts of cold water
1 teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of black pepper

Directions

Prepare

Place the meat and bones in a tightly-covered kettle.
Add the cold water, salt, and pepper.
Let the mixture sit until the water is slightly colored by the meat juices.

Simmer

Bring to a slow boil, skimming off any scum that rises.
Add a cup of cold water to help the scum rise more freely.
Allow to boil steadily but slowly for 1 hour per pound of meat.
After cooking, the liquid will reduce to about one-third of the original amount.

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.

Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and bones: Release flavor and gelatin into the liquid as they simmer for a long time.
Cold water: Dissolves and carries flavor and gelatin out of the meat and bones.

The step that matters

Bring to a slow boil and skim the scum. A hard, rapid boil churns fats and impurities into the liquid, making the stock cloudy and greasy. Keeping it at a gentle simmer and skimming the scum that rises gives a clearer, cleaner stock.

“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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Stock and Seasoning