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Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, bones, vegetables, spices, and optional vermicelli or pearl barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut all the lean beef off the shank.

  2. In a kettle, heat a little beef suet until browned.

  3. Add the bones and cover with cold water.

  4. Cover the kettle tightly and cook slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  5. Strain the broth through a colander and let it sit overnight to remove fat.

Season and finish

  1. On the day of serving, fry a sliced carrot, onion, and small turnip until browned.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon sugar, a blade of mace, 6 cloves, 12 kernels of allspice, and 1 teaspoon celery seed to the vegetables.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly in the soup for 1 hour, then strain again.

  4. If using vermicelli or pearl barley, cook until tender in water and add to the soup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef from the shank
Breaks down during slow cooking to give the broth body and rich meaty flavour.
Beef suet
Adds fat that browns and carries flavour into the kettle at the start.
Carrot
Fried until browned, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Onion
Fried until browned, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Small turnip
Fried until browned, adding sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Overnight chilling and fat removal. Fat that is not removed after straining stays in the broth and makes it greasy. Letting the strained broth sit overnight lets fat rise and solidify on top so it can be lifted off.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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