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Roast Beef Bone Soup

A hearty soup made from roasted beef bones, onions, potatoes, turnip, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Beef Bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the bones for at least 3 hours until all meat is loose.

  2. Remove the bones.

  3. Scrape off the meat, setting it aside.

  4. Let the water cool.

  5. Remove all the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Chop the onion, potatoes, and turnip.

  2. Add them to the water.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Add salt 30 minutes before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef bones
Release collagen and marrow flavor into the water, giving the broth body and savoury depth.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, thickening the broth and adding starchy body.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly peppery sweetness that rounds out the broth.
Onion
Releases sugars and aromatic compounds during boiling, adding sweetness and savoury background flavor.

The step that matters

Let the water cool and remove all the fat. Fat that stays in the broth floats and makes the soup greasy, while cooling lets the fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, potato. 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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