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Gravy Made From Bones

A savory liquid made by simmering bones, water, onions, herbs, salt, and pepper for about three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Gravy Made From Bones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the bones into small pieces.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the bones in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat and let simmer for nearly 3 hours.

  3. Add the onions, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.

  4. Strain the mixture and reserve the liquid for making gravy or sauces.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Beef, mutton, or veal bones
Release gelatin, collagen and savory flavor into the water during long simmering.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth.
Sweet herbs
Contribute aromatic flavor to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. Once boiling, the heat should be reduced so the liquid only simmers. A hard boil can make the broth cloudy and emulsify fat into it, while slow simmering extracts gelatin and flavor more cleanly over the long cooking time.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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.

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