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Bone Soup

Bone soup made with mutton bones, carrots, onions, turnip, parsley, celery, salt, pepper, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place the mutton bones in a saucepan with 8 cups of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the finely chopped carrots, turnip, onions, parsley, celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil for 2 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour with 1 cup of milk until smooth, then add to the soup.

  2. Continue boiling for 15 minutes, then remove the bones and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Mutton bones
Release flavor and gelatin into the broth as they simmer for a long time.
Flour
Thickens the milk and soup, giving the broth body as it cooks.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the broth, softening its flavor.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften while simmering.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness in the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with the milk until smooth. Flour clumps if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it smooth with cold milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, pepper, flour. 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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