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Beef Soip

A hearty beef broth with tomatoes, potatoes, and egg dough strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,798 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Soip

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the soup bone in a large pot with 1 gallon of cold water and 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover and boil slowly for 4-5 hours, skimming as needed.

Add the vegetables and noodles

  1. One hour before serving, add the tomatoes, sliced potatoes, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Mix the beaten egg with enough flour to make a stiff dough, roll it thin, and let it dry for 1 hour.

  3. Cut the dried dough into thin strips and drop them into the soup 15 minutes before serving.

  4. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with a little cold water and add it to the soup just before removing from heat.

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. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases flavour and body into the broth during long, slow simmering.
Potatoes
Soften in the broth and add starch that gives the soup body.
Egg
Binds the flour into a stiff dough that holds its shape as noodles.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a bright, savoury flavour to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup when stirred in with cold water at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the flour slurry. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid forms lumps. Mixing it with cold water first lets it disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly as the soup comes to heat.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, egg, flour. 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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