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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with vegetables and grains, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 and wash it.

  2. Place the beef in a kettle with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for about 2 hours until tender.

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

Add the vegetables

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

  2. After 15 minutes, add the diced potatoes and boil for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat from the soup, discard the bones, and place the meat on a dish.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve with mustard and catsup.

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

Beef shin
Bones and connective tissue release flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Rice or pearl barley
Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds body to the soup.
Potatoes
Starch softens and partly breaks down, giving the soup a fuller texture.
Turnips
Mild sweetness and firm texture that holds up through long simmering.

The step that matters

Add the diced potatoes after 15 minutes. Potatoes cook quickly and can turn mushy if added too early. Timing them after the other vegetables keeps their pieces intact while the soup still gets their starch.

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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