Skip to main content
Main

Marrow-bone Soup

A hearty soup made from marrow bones, salt pork or ham bones, onions, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, herbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Marrow-bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Put marrow bones in 5 quarts of water and cook slowly for 4 hours, leaving 3 quarts of water.

  2. Strain broth into a bowl and cool in cold water to let fat rise.

  3. Remove fat and return broth to pot.

Add the vegetables

  1. Soak sliced onions in scalding water for 10 minutes to reduce strong taste, then add them to pot with parboiled potatoes, tomatoes, and herbs.

  2. Boil slowly until vegetables can be rubbed through a colander.

  3. Add pureed vegetables to soup, season with salt and pepper, and heat until just before boiling.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Marrow bones
Release gelatin and rich flavour into the broth during long, slow cooking.
Potatoes
Starch thickens the soup body once the vegetables are pureed.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, balancing the richness of the broth.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aromatic base; soaking mellows their sharpness.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Cooling the strained broth lets fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off. Leaving fat in gives a greasy, heavy soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, celery, tomato, potato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, celery, tomato, potato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes