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Brown Soup

A hearty beef soup simmered with cinnamon, cloves, mace, onion, carrot, turnip, and lemon, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Brown Soup

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Crack the bone of the shank of beef and remove the marrow, placing it in the bottom of a soup kettle.

  2. Cut the meat from the bones and add it to the kettle, browning the meat on all sides without burning it.

  3. Add the bones and 2 quarts of cold water, cover tightly, and let it simmer for 1 hour.

  4. After 1 hour, add the stick of cinnamon, cloves, mace, onion, carrot, turnip, and 6 quarts of water.

  5. Boil gently for 6 hours, then strain and set aside.

Finish and serve

  1. In the morning, skim off the fat, return the soup to the kettle, and bring it to a boil.

  2. Season to taste with pepper and coarse sea salt, then slice the fresh lemon and add it to the soup.

  3. Serve with toasted bread cut into small squares on the side.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Beef shank
Browned meat and bones release rich flavor and body into the broth as they simmer.
Beef marrow
Melts into the broth, adding richness and a fuller mouthfeel.
Onion
Builds savory, aromatic sweetness as it cooks slowly in the broth.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aromatic depth during the long simmer.
Fresh lemon
Brightens the finished soup with acidity that balances the rich beef flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the meat without burning it. Browning creates deep, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction, but scorched meat turns bitter and can taint the whole pot of broth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cinnamon, clove, onion, carrot, turnip, 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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