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Bone Stock for Soup

A clear stock made by simmering bones, carrots, celery, and salt in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Bone Stock for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the bones into very small pieces.

  2. Place the bones, carrots, and celery in a stewpan.

  3. Cover with cold water or leftover braising liquid.

Simmer and clarify

  1. Bring to a boil quickly and skim off the scum that rises.

  2. Add cold water to help the scum rise again; repeat this 2-3 times until the stock is clear.

  3. Remove from heat and let it stew for 2 hours to extract the goodness from the bones.

Strain and chill

  1. Strain the stock and let it sit overnight.

  2. The next day, carefully remove the grease without leaving any residue.

  3. Lift the stock from the sediment at the bottom of the pan.

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. Meat + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Meat + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,880 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + carrottop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,905 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

Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the liquid during long, gentle stewing.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock.
Celery
Contributes savoury, aromatic flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Bringing the liquid to a boil quickly lifts impurities and proteins to the surface as scum. Removing it while the stock is still moving clears the liquid and keeps the flavour clean; leaving it in can make the stock cloudy and bitter.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mutton, carrot):

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mutton, carrot. 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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