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A Roast Beef and Boiled Turkey Soup

A hearty soup made with turkey liquor, turkey and beef bones, carrots, turnips, onion, cloves, pepper, salt, tomatoes, flour, toasted bread, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

A Roast Beef and Boiled Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the turkey liquor, turkey bones, and beef bones in a soup pot.

  2. Add carrots, turnips, onion, cloves, pepper, salt, and tomatoes.

  3. Boil for 4 hours, then strain the mixture.

  4. Return the soup to the pot.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix flour with a little cold water and stir it into the soup.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Place toasted bread dice in the bottom of a tureen.

  4. Pour the soup over the bread and add a little soy sauce for color.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a lightly body-rich soup when mixed with cold water first.
Toasted bread
Soaks up broth at the bottom of the tureen, adding texture and body to each serving.
Turkey bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the long-simmered broth, giving it depth and body.
Beef bones
Add rich, savory meat flavor and body to the long-simmered broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Onion
Builds savory aroma and sweetness as it cooks down into the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold water before stirring it in. Flour dropped directly into hot liquid clumps, because its starch surface gets wet unevenly. Suspending it in cold water first lets the grains disperse, so the soup thickens smoothly when brought to a boil.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, 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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