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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with rice or barley, vegetables, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine beef, water, rice or barley, and salt in a soup pot.

  2. Boil slowly for 2 hours.

  3. In another pot, add soup bone, leek, parsley, onion, potato, carrot, and turnip.

  4. Boil until the meat is tender.

  5. Strain the soup off the bones and vegetables into the first pot.

Finish and serve

  1. In a soup tureen, beat the eggs.

  2. Gradually add the soup to the eggs to prevent curdling.

  3. Stir well 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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Beef
Provides rich meaty flavor and tender texture as it simmers.
Rice or barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds body with its starch.
Eggs
Beaten eggs enrich the soup and thicken it when combined with hot broth.
Soup bone
Releases gelatin and marrow flavor into the broth as it simmers.
Potato
Softens into the broth, adding body and mild starchy sweetness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the soup to the eggs. Adding hot soup slowly to the beaten eggs gradually warms them, so they blend smoothly instead of scrambling and curdling in the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, leek, parsley, potato, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, leek, parsley, potato, carrot, turnip. 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.

More beef soup recipes

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