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Soup

Bones Soup

A hearty soup made from bones simmered for hours with vegetables, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bones Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the bones in a stock pot and cover with water.

  2. Boil for at least 6 hours, adding hot water as needed.

Season and finish

  1. About 1 hour before serving, add carrots, celery, herbs, parsley, onions, mace, cloves, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Strain the soup to remove fat.

  3. Beat the eggs with cold water and stir into the soup.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain again and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long boiling, giving the soup body.
Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, gathering fine particles so the soup can be strained clear.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic flavour to the broth.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and sweetness as they cook slowly in the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg mixture. Eggs must be stirred in gently and simmered, not boiled hard. Proteins set as they heat and trap particles, which the final straining then removes; rough boiling breaks up the curds and leaves the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley, onion, clove, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley, onion, clove, egg. 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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