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Bone Stock

A clear stock made by simmering bones, water, salt, onion, carrot, parsley, and thyme for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Bone Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using raw bones, wash them well.

  2. Place the bones in a pan and cover with water.

  3. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil.

Simmer and strain

  1. Reduce heat and simmer steadily for 9 hours.

  2. For added flavor, add the fried onion, carrot, parsley, and thyme 1½ hours before straining.

  3. Simmer until nicely flavored, then strain and use.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Bones
Release collagen, gelatin and minerals into the water, giving the broth body and richness.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Fried onion
Adds savory, browned flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Keeping the simmer gentle. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and can make the broth cloudy and greasy. A steady, gentle simmer over the long cooking time extracts flavor and gelatin while keeping the broth clearer.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, thyme. 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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