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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with vegetables and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the beef with cold water in a pot.

  2. Boil slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Add cold water to stop the boil.

  4. Skim off the top three times.

  5. Add the onion, potatoes, carrot, turnip, and parsley.

  6. Boil for 1 more hour.

  7. Remove the meat and strain the vegetables into another vessel.

Finish the soup

  1. Beat the eggs in the soup tureen.

  2. Stir in the soup gradually to avoid curdling.

  3. Add the vegetables.

  4. Season with salt and pepper 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. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken and enrich the soup when stirred in gently.
Potatoes
Starch softens during cooking and gives the soup body.

The step that matters

Stir in the soup gradually. Adding hot soup slowly to the beaten eggs gently raises their temperature. Pouring it in all at once can scramble the eggs and cause curdling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, carrot, turnip, parsley, egg, 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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