Skip to main content
Main

A Dark Soup

A hearty beef soup made with a slow‑cooked broth, onions, butter, flour, spices, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the shin of beef in a large pot with 6 quarts of water and boil for 6 to 8 hours.

  2. Strain the broth into an earthen vessel and let it cool overnight.

  3. Skim off the fat from the top of the broth.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until golden brown.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until browned, but not burned.

  3. Remove from heat and add salt, pepper, ground cloves, and whole cloves.

  4. Pour in 1 quart of the beef stock and add the chopped celery, carrot, and turnip.

  5. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water during long boiling, giving the broth body.
Onion
Browning in butter builds sweet, savory flavor as the base of the soup.
Flour
Browned with the butter, it thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty note.
Beef stock
Adds concentrated beef flavor to the soup base.
Celery, carrot, and turnip
Simmering softens these vegetables and adds sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in butter must reach a light brown, not dark. Burnt flour tastes bitter and dull, and it can't thicken well, so stop at the point the recipe describes.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, butter, flour, pepper, celery, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Roast BeefIllustrationRoast Beef211 recipesIllustration of Beef LoafIllustrationBeef Loaf175 recipesIllustration of Carrot SoupIllustrationCarrot Soup134 recipesIllustration of Cream of Celery SoupIllustrationCream of Celery Soup113 recipes