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Bone Soup

Bone soup made by simmering bones, vegetables, and herbs, then straining and thickening with grain or vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Simmer the bones in 2 quarts of cold water for 4 hours.

  2. Cool the broth.

  3. Remove the layer of fat.

  4. Strain out the vegetables.

  5. Return the broth to the saucepan.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with any grain or sliced fresh vegetables.

  2. If desired, add Bovril or brown coloring for flavor.

  3. For a white soup, add 2 tablespoons of milk with thickening grains.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 savoury flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Grain or sliced fresh vegetables
Swell or break down during cooking to thicken the soup and add substance.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy, whitened colour to the soup when used for a white version.

The step that matters

Remove the layer of fat. Fat that cools onto the surface of the broth can make the soup greasy and heavy. Chilling and skimming it off gives a cleaner taste and clearer broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, semolina, milk. 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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