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Beef and Sago Soup

A hearty soup made with minced beef, sago, onion, and egg, simmered slowly and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef and Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine beef, onion, and water in a pot.

  2. Cook gently for 4 hours until reduced to 2 quarts.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then set aside until the next day.

  4. Skim off the fat and strain through a coarse cloth.

Clarify and finish

  1. Return stock to heat and add the egg white and shell; boil slowly for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain again without squeezing, then return to heat with soaked sago.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse beef
Gives the stock its meaty flavor and body as it cooks down.
German sago
Swells as it simmers, thickening the soup and giving it a soft, translucent texture.
Egg white
Coagulates and gathers fine particles as it heats, helping clarify the stock.

The step that matters

Strain again without squeezing. Squeezing the cloth pushes fine solids and cloudy particles through into the stock, undoing the clarification the egg white achieved and leaving the soup murky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, egg. 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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