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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with turnips, onions, carrots, celery, herbs, and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Crack the bone of the shin of beef and place it in a pot with water, using 1 quart of water for each pound of meat.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt for each quart of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for 2 hours, skimming the surface regularly.

  4. Add the turnips, onions, carrots, celery, and tied sweet herbs to the pot.

  5. Once the vegetables are tender, remove the meat and strain the soup back into the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the soup with a mixture of flour and water.

  2. Stir in chopped parsley, and season with more salt and pepper to taste.

  3. For the dumplings, mix 2 teaspoons of butter with 4 teaspoons of flour and moisten with a little water or milk.

  4. Drop the dumplings into the boiling soup and let them cook for 5 minutes before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Shin of beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers with the bone.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed with water, giving it a fuller body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the broth as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dumplings.

The step that matters

Skimming during the 2-hour boil. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the broth boils. Skimming them regularly keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, turnip, carrot, celery, flour, parsley. 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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