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Plain Economical Soup

A simple soup made with beef bone, beefsteak, poultry, carrots, turnips, onion, and a flour slurry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Plain Economical Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef bone, beefsteak, and turkey or chicken rack in a pot with water.

  2. Add the carrots, turnips, onion, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil gently for 4 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander, mashing the vegetables to pass through.

  5. Skim off the fat and return the soup to the pot.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour with water and stir it into the soup.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with bits of dry toast cut into triangles.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef bone
Releases collagen and savory flavor into the broth during long gentle simmering.
Beefsteak
Adds meaty flavor and richness to the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and body as they soften and break down.
Flour
Mixed with water and stirred in, it thickens the soup slightly.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat. Fat rises to the surface of a long-simmered broth and, if left in, makes the soup greasy. Removing it after straining leaves a cleaner, lighter-tasting result.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turkey, carrot, turnip, clove, pepper, flour. 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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