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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shank, bones, vegetables, spices, and optional vermicelli or pearl barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the lean beef from the shank and brown it in a pot with a little beef suet.

  2. Add the bones and cover with cold water, then cover the pot tightly.

  3. Cook slowly until the meat falls off the bones, then strain through a colander.

  4. Let the broth sit overnight to allow the fat to rise and solidify.

Finish the soup

  1. Fry a sliced carrot, onion, and small turnip until browned.

  2. Add the fried vegetables, sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed to the broth.

  3. Cook slowly for an hour, then strain again before serving.

  4. If using vermicelli or pearl barley, cook them in water until tender and add to the soup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Lean beef from the shank
Provides meaty flavour and body as it cooks slowly into the broth.
Bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the water during long, gentle cooking.
Beef suet
Adds fat that browns the meat and carries aroma into the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns and softens in the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness once fried until browned.

The step that matters

Letting the broth sit overnight. Chilling lets the fat rise and solidify on the surface, so it can be lifted off. Skipping this leaves the soup greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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