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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with onions, carrots, turnips, thyme, parsley, celery, and toasted bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all flesh from the leg bone of the hind shin of beef, then discard the bone.

  2. Wash the meat and place it in a pot.

  3. Sprinkle with black pepper and coarse sea salt.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add chopped onions, carrots, and diced turnips.

  2. Pour in 3 quarts of water and cover the pot.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 hours, skimming off any scum that rises to the surface.

  4. After 4 hours, add the thyme, parsley, and chopped celery or celery seed.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt brown sugar until dark in a skillet, then gradually stir in a ladle of soup.

  2. Strain the mixture and combine it with the soup.

  3. Remove the thyme and parsley bundles.

  4. Place the best pieces of meat in a tureen, pour the soup and vegetables over them, and add toasted bread cubes.

  5. Serve.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Hind shin of beef
Provides meat and flavour that enrich the broth during long simmering.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth into the broth as they cook slowly.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild earthy flavour and soft texture to the broth.
Brown sugar
Caramelised until dark, it adds colour and a deeper, sweeter flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum while simmering. Foam that rises during simmering contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and prevents a muddy, off-tasting soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, thyme, parsley, celery. 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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