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Bone Soup

Bone soup is a clear broth made by simmering bones, vegetables, and seasonings, thickened with flour or cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bones

  1. Heat the dripping in a stewpan until smoking hot.

  2. Wash, dry, and trim the fat and discolored pieces from the bones.

  3. Fry the bones until browned, then drain them.

  4. Pour off the dripping and return the bones to the pan with cold water and 2 teaspoons of salt.

  5. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the vegetables cut into quarters and the peppercorns, parsley, and thyme.

  2. Simmer gently for 4 hours.

  3. Strain the soup and let it cool, then skim off all fat.

  4. Bring the soup back to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour or cornflour with a little cold water to form a smooth cream, then add to the soup.

  2. Boil for 5 to 10 minutes, adding a few drops of caramel for color.

  3. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the water during the long simmer, giving body to the broth.
Dripping
Fat that browns the bones, building roasted flavor before the liquid is added.
Flour or cornflour
Starch that thickens the soup once it is mixed smooth in cold water and boiled.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Skim the fat after cooling. Fat that is not removed after the soup cools leaves a greasy mouthfeel. Chilling makes fat solidify on the surface, so it lifts off cleanly. Starch added to hot, fatty soup can also clump if not first mixed smooth in cold water.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip, flour, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, parsley, carrot, turnip, flour, 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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