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A Shin of Beef Soup

A soup made from a beef shin simmered with cabbage, turnips, carrots, onions, pepper, salt, and optional raised dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 Shin of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the beef shin in water for 5-6 hours, skimming often.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage, turnips, carrots, onions, pepper, and salt to the pot and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Half an hour before serving, remove the bone and gristle.

Add dough and serve

  1. If using raised dough, form a dozen small balls the size of a nutmeg, drop them into the soup, and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 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 shin
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and rich savory flavor.
White cabbage
Adds sweetness and a tender vegetable texture as it cooks down into the broth.
Turnips
Soften during long boiling and contribute mild sweetness to the broth.
Carrots
Release natural sugars as they cook, adding sweetness and balancing the savory broth.
Onions
Break down during simmering, adding depth and aromatic flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the beef shin broth. Skimming foam and fat as the beef boils removes impurities that can make the broth cloudy and greasy, so the soup stays clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

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