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Gravy Made From Bones

A liquid made by simmering mutton or veal bones with water, onions, herbs, salt, and pepper for nearly three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Gravy Made From Bones

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine mutton or veal bones in a pot with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer for nearly 3 hours.

  3. Add 2 onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, salt, and pepper while simmering.

  4. Strain the mixture and reserve the liquid for making gravy or sauces.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 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

Mutton or veal bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Simmering after the boil. Once the broth reaches a boil, the heat must drop to a gentle simmer. A hard boil makes the liquid cloudy and can emulsify fat into it, while slow simmering keeps the broth clear and lets collagen from the bones dissolve gradually.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper. 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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