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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with tomatoes, carrots, onions, rice, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the base

  1. Combine the beef, carrot, onions, rice, and cold water in a soup kettle.

  2. Cover and boil slowly for 3 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the tomatoes, salt, pepper, and cloves.

  2. Boil for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. If using fresh tomatoes, peel them.

  4. Add the peeled tomatoes to the kettle 40 minutes before serving.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Provides the main meat flavor, and long simmering softens its connective tissue for tenderness.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savory flavor that brightens the broth.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor into the broth as they cook.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Rice
Releases starch into the broth, lightly thickening it.

The step that matters

Cover and boil slowly for 3 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the beef's connective tissue break down slowly. A vigorous boil tends to toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, carrot, onion, rice, pepper):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, carrot, onion, rice, pepper. 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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