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Clear Vegetable Soup

A clear broth made from beef shin and assorted vegetables, simmered and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Clear Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the shin of beef in a large kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for three hours (can be done the day before).

  3. Strain the broth and remove any fat from the surface.

  4. Return the clear broth to the kettle.

Add the vegetables and serve

  1. Cut the vegetables into uniform pieces.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, sweet potato, beans, and rice one hour before serving.

  3. Add the potato, peas, corn, and tomato twenty minutes before serving.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste 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. Sweet potato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + sweet potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 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

Shin of beef
Simmered for three hours to release flavor and body into the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and color, and holds its shape during the longer simmer.
Sweet potato
Adds natural sweetness and a soft, starchy body to the soup.
White potato
Adds starch that softens and gives the soup a fuller body.
Rice
Releases starch into the broth, thickening it slightly as it cooks.
Tomato
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the rich beef broth.

The step that matters

Strain and skim the broth before adding vegetables. Removing fat and solids leaves a clear, clean-tasting broth. Skimming fat from the surface prevents a greasy mouthfeel, and adding vegetables to unclarified broth would cloud it.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, sweet potato, potato, corn, beans):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, sweet potato, potato, corn, beans. 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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