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Bone Soup

A hearty soup made by simmering bones, meat, vegetables, and herbs for two hours, then thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Fry the pieces of meat with the onion in dripping until brown.

  2. Add the meat and onion to 4 pints of water and bring to near boiling.

  3. Stir in 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt to raise the scum and skim well.

  4. Once boiling, add the carrots, turnips, parsnip, herbs, celery, mace, and peppercorns.

  5. Let it simmer gently for 2 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup and return it to the saucepan with the sliced vegetables.

  2. Thicken the soup with 1 dessert spoonful of cornflour or common flour per pint.

  3. If desired, color the soup with burnt sugar.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during the long simmer, giving body to the broth.
Meat
Browning in dripping adds savoury depth, and the meat contributes flavour to the stock.
Onion
Browns with the meat and adds sweetness and aroma to the base.
Cornflour or common flour
Starch thickens the strained liquid so it has a fuller, more coating texture.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they cook in the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming after adding the salt. Salt helps scum rise to the surface so it can be removed. Skimming well keeps the broth clear and free of off-flavours that would otherwise stay in the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery, 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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