Skip to main content
Main

Bone-soup

A hearty soup made by simmering bones with vegetables and potatoes, then mashing the potatoes into the broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bone-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Fill a dinner pot half full of bones and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil.

  3. Simmer for three hours.

  4. After one hour, add the sliced carrot and turnips.

  5. After another hour, add 1 teaspoon of salt for each quart of water.

Finish and serve

  1. Wash, peel and rinse the potatoes.

  2. Set aside all but one or two potatoes.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, place the reserved potatoes in the oven.

  4. Strain the soup to remove bones.

  5. Mash the reserved potatoes into the soup.

  6. Return the vegetables to the soup.

  7. Serve with or without the meat.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 collagen and flavour into the water, giving the broth body and richness.
Potatoes
Their starch thickens the broth when mashed into it.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Turnips
Add earthy flavour and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Mash the reserved potatoes into the soup. As potatoes break down, their starch dissolves into the hot liquid and thickens it. Mashing them in while the soup is hot lets the starch distribute evenly, giving a smooth, body-rich texture instead of lumps.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, potato, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, 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.

More bone soup recipes

Beef 14Turkey 9Ham 4 See all 16 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes