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Turkey-bone Soup

A clear soup made from turkey or chicken bones, water, onion, and optional oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turkey and meat work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 540 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turkey-bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Scrape the meat from the bones and set aside any nice pieces.

  2. Break the bones and pack them in a kettle with cold water and the onion.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for 3 hours.

  4. Strain the stock and remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the stock to the fire and add 1 cup of cold meat and ¾ cup of filling for each quart of stock.

  2. Let the soup simmer for 30 minutes and serve.

  3. For added flavor, boil 10 oysters in the soup for 3 minutes before serving.

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. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Turkey + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  4. Meat + oystertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Turkey + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey or chicken carcass
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the stock body.
Cold meat from turkey or chicken
Adds savory meat flavor and texture to the finished soup.
Filling from turkey or chicken
Adds savory flavor and body, thickening the soup slightly with its starch.
Oysters
Adds a briny, savory aroma and a distinct seafood flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones while keeping the stock clear. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the stock cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, oyster. 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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