Skip to main content
Main

Ax Economical Soup

A simple beef bone soup with cabbage, turnips, and potatoes, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ax Economical Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the soup bone and place it in a kettle with enough cold water for soup.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim thoroughly, and boil for 3 to 4 hours, depending on the size of the meat.

Add the vegetables

  1. One hour before serving, add the quartered cabbage and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Fifteen minutes later, add the halved or quartered turnips.

  3. Fifteen minutes after that, add the whole potatoes.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the vegetables and meat and place them in hot dishes.

  2. If the soup is not enough, add hot water, bring to a boil, and stir in a little flour mixed with water to thicken.

  3. Season to taste with pepper and salt, and serve immediately.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water as it simmers slowly for hours.
Cabbage
Adds body and a mild sweetness to the broth as it cooks.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and add a mildly sweet, earthy flavor to the soup.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding starch that gives the soup more body.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid when mixed with water and heated, making the soup less thin.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling broth. Skimming the foam that rises at the first boil removes impurities and coagulated proteins, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cabbage, turnip, flour, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes