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Nice Family Soup

A hearty beef soup with peas, potatoes, rice, celery, and carrot, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Nice Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine beef, gray peas, potatoes, onion, rice, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer until the liquid is reduced to 5 pints.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve and return the liquid to the saucepan.

  4. Add the chopped celery and grated carrot to the soup.

  5. Stew well and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Place toasted bread in a tureen and pour the hot soup over it 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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

Beef
Provides savory flavor and meaty body as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Gray peas
Thicken the broth and add earthy, starchy body once cooked and strained.
Potatoes
Release starch into the broth, adding body and thickening the soup.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and adds starch, contributing to the soup's thickness.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a sieve. Straining after the long simmer removes the softened solids so the broth becomes smooth. Pressing gently lets the pulp pass through, which gives the soup its body.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, onion, rice, celery, carrot, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, onion, rice, celery, carrot, 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.

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