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Beef Soup

A clear beef broth made with soup bone, salt, carrots, parsnips, parsley, and leek.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the soup bone with cold water.

  2. Add the salt.

  3. Skim until it boils clear.

  4. Let it boil slowly for 3 hours.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Add the sliced carrots and parsnips.

  2. Boil for another hour.

  3. Flavor with parsley and leek.

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. Parsnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  4. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Soup bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water during long, slow simmering, giving the broth body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a rounded aroma to the broth.
Parsnips
Add earthy sweetness and body as they soften in the broth.
Leek
Adds a mild onion-like aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim until the broth boils clear. Foam and fine particles rise to the surface as the bone simmers. Skimming them off keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting murky or greasy.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsnip, parsley):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits about as well
  3. Leekthe original
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsnip, parsley. 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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