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A hearty soup made with cracked beef or mutton, vegetables, grains, and seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and break the bones.

  2. Place the meat and bones in a pot with cold water, without salt.

  3. Heat slowly until it comes to a boil, then skim the surface.

  4. Cover the pot and let it simmer until the meat is thoroughly cooked and the juices are extracted.

Finish and serve

  1. The next day, remove the fat that hardens on top of the soup.

  2. Reheat the soup and add boiled vegetables.

  3. Season with salt and a little cayenne pepper.

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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Beef, veal, or mutton
Releases juices and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and savory flavor.
Bones
Add gelatin and marrow flavor to the stock as they simmer slowly.
Vegetables
Contribute sweetness, aroma, and color to the finished soup.
Rice, barley, vermicelli, or macaroni
Add starch and bulk, thickening the soup and making it more filling.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is thoroughly cooked. Simmering gently keeps the broth clear and lets collagen in the joints and bones break down into gelatin. Boiling hard emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds the soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, cabbage, rice):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, cabbage, rice. 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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