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Vegetable and Meat

A soup made with cracked joints of beef, veal, or mutton, vegetables, and grains, simmered and seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Vegetable and Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make 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.

  4. Skim the surface.

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

  6. Once cooled, remove the fat that hardens on top.

  7. Reheat the soup the next day.

Finish the soup

  1. Add boiled vegetables.

  2. 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 + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 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 joints
Release gelatin and flavour into the broth as they simmer.
Bones
Add body and richness to the stock through their marrow and gelatin.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the finished soup.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during cooking.
Scotch barley
Adds chewy texture and thickens the broth as its starch releases.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture.

The step that matters

Simmering until the meat is thoroughly cooked. Gentle simmering draws out gelatin and flavour slowly, while a hard boil can make the broth cloudy and toughen the meat. Cooking until the meat is fully done ensures the juices are properly extracted.

Swap the peas

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

  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, asparagus. 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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