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Soup

Brown Soup

A hearty soup made from beef shank, root vegetables, onions, peppercorns, and a white egg, finished with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Brown Soup

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 ↓

Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef shank, carrot, turnip, onions, and peppercorns.

  2. Cover with cold water and boil slowly for a full day.

  3. Skim and strain the broth the next day, then return it to the stove.

Clarify and serve

  1. Add the white egg and eggshell, and boil for five minutes.

  2. Strain through a fine cloth and let it settle for a day.

  3. Before serving, heat the soup and add a glass of wine.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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 shank
Slow simmering draws flavor and body from the meat and bones into the broth.
White egg
Its white coagulates as it heats, trapping cloudy particles so the broth comes out clearer.
Eggshell
Its fine particles add surface area that helps gather impurities for the egg white to trap.
Wine
Added at the end, it contributes aroma and a touch of acidity to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg white and eggshell. The egg white forms a raft that traps cloudy particles as it sets. Vigorous boiling or stirring can break the raft and leave the broth cloudy, so the mixture should be kept at a gentle simmer.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, egg, wine):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, egg, wine. 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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