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Bone Soup

A hearty soup made from bones, vegetables, herbs, and sago, simmered for hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Break the bones into small pieces and fry them in hot fat until well browned.

  2. Add the water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt, bring to a boil, and skim well.

  3. Add the prepared vegetables (cut into thick slices), herbs, peppercorns, and cloves.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cook gently for about 5 hours, skimming occasionally.

  2. Strain the soup, return it to the saucepan, and season to taste.

Thicken and serve

  1. When the soup boils, sprinkle in the sago and simmer for 10 minutes longer to cook the sago.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 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

Bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the water as they simmer for hours.
Sago
Thickens the broth as its starch swells and gelatinizes during simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth as their sugars brown and mellow during cooking.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Browning the bones in hot fat. Frying the bones until well browned triggers Maillard reactions, which build deeper, roasted flavor in the finished broth. Pale bones yield a flatter-tasting soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove, semolina. 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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