Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓
Beef Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the broth
Wash the shin bone of beef and place it in a pot of cold water.
Add a small amount of coarse sea salt and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.
Add the vegetables
Prepare vegetables like carrots, onions, turnips, cabbage, potatoes, and celery root according to your taste.
If you do not want the vegetables in the soup, remove the meat and strain the soup.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,023 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
- Shin bone of beef
- Releases flavour and gelatin into the water as it simmers, giving the broth body.
- Potatoes
- Break down slightly as they cook, thickening the soup and adding starch.
- Carrots
- Add sweetness and colour to the broth as they cook.
- Onions
- Add aromatic flavour that deepens as the broth simmers.
The step that matters
Skimming off the foam. Foam that rises as the water heats carries impurities and proteins that can make the broth cloudy and taste off, so it should be removed as it forms.
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, turnip, potato, celery):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Chivefits better
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, turnip, potato, celery. 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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