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Anothek Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with barley, carrots, onions, turnip, tomatoes, parsley, pot herbs, cayenne, black pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Anothek Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil the shin of beef the day before you need it.

  2. The next day, remove the fat from the top of the stock.

Make the soup

  1. Add the barley to the stock.

  2. Wash and chop the carrots, onions, turnip, and tomatoes.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables to the pot.

  4. Add parsley and pot herbs twenty minutes before serving.

  5. Season with cayenne, black pepper, and salt to taste.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Barley
Swells as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it a chewy texture.
Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and flavour into the stock, giving the soup body and richness.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury aromatic base as they soften in the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they soften during cooking.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and depth of flavour to the broth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, barley, carrot, onion, turnip, parsley, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, barley, carrot, onion, turnip, parsley, pepper. 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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