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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with carrots, turnip, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, spices, lemon, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare the beef stock a day in advance.

  2. In a large pot, gently boil the meat for 2 hours.

  3. Add the sliced carrots, diced turnip, chopped cabbage, sliced tomatoes, and sliced onions.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for 2 more hours until the meat is tender and the vegetables are soft.

  5. Strain the soup and refrigerate overnight.

Finish and serve

  1. The next day, skim off the fat and pour the soup through a fine strainer back into the pot.

  2. Heat the soup until it comes to a boil.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, mace, clove, curry powder, and celery salt.

  4. Add the lemon slices and boil for an additional minute.

  5. Serve the soup in a tureen with chopped hard-boiled eggs stirred in.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a rounded, savoury flavour to the broth.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness as they cook down in the stock.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture when stirred into the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming and straining the chilled stock. Refrigerating overnight lets fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off cleanly. Straining through a fine sieve removes small particles, leaving a clearer, less greasy broth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, cabbage, tomato, onion, 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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