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Beef Soup

A hearty beef broth with vegetables and grains, served hot with mustard and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Crack the bone of the beef into small pieces.

  2. Wash the beef.

  3. Place the beef in a kettle with cold water.

Simmer the soup

  1. Boil for about 2 hours until tender.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil for 1 hour longer.

  4. Add the minced carrot, turnips, rice or barley, celery, and summer savory.

  5. After 15 minutes, add the diced potatoes.

  6. Boil for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat from the soup.

  2. Take out the bones.

  3. Place the meat on a dish, garnishing with parsley.

  4. Serve hot with made mustard and catsup.

  5. Optionally add a glass of brown sherry 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides rich meat flavor and, as the bone breaks, gelatin that gives the broth body.
Rice or pearl barley
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch that lightly thickens the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body as they soften in the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Boil the beef for the full 2 hours before adding vegetables. Shin meat is tough connective tissue; it needs long, gentle simmering to break down into tender meat and gelatin. Adding vegetables too early or rushing this time leaves the meat chewy and the broth thin.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, rice, celery, potato. 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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