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Beef Soup

A hearty broth made with beef shin, vegetables, and rice, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the broth

  1. Crack the bone of the beef into small pieces and place in a kettle with 5 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then boil for 1 hour longer.

Add the vegetables and serve

  1. Mince the carrot, turnips, celery, and onion into small pieces or chop them.

  2. Add the minced vegetables and rice to the kettle and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Cut the potatoes into small pieces and add them to the kettle.

  4. Boil for an additional 30 minutes and serve hot.

  5. If any soup is left, add hot water to reheat and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  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

Beef shin bone
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and richness.
Rice
Swells as it cooks and thickens the soup slightly with its starch.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook and add starch that gives the broth more body.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe 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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