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Summer Soup

A hearty beef soup with corn, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and a creamy finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Summer Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the beef shank in a kettle with 4 quarts of water.

  2. Boil slowly for 6 hours, reducing the water to 2 quarts.

  3. An hour before serving, add the green corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and onions.

  4. Season with sweet herbs, pepper, and salt to taste.

  5. Just before serving, mix the cream with the flour and add to the soup.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  4. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Long slow boiling draws flavor and body into the broth.
Potatoes
Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds body to the soup.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it blends smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and flour mixture. Cream mixed with flour and stirred into a hot liquid can separate or form lumps if not blended first. Mixing them together before adding, and adding them just before serving, keeps the soup smooth and avoids overcooking the dairy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, corn, potato, onion, pepper, cream, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, corn, potato, onion, pepper, cream, 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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