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Qbavy Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, veal, ham, butter, vegetables, spices, and sugar, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Qbavy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Brown the beef and ham in the butter without burning them.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and remove any scum that rises.

  3. Once the scum is gone, add all other ingredients.

  4. Let the soup simmer slowly for 6 hours without stirring.

Clarify and strain

  1. Remove from heat and let it settle.

  2. Skim off the fat and strain the soup through a sieve or cloth.

  3. Once cold, remove any remaining fat, leaving the sediment for gravies.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Shin of beef
Provides meat flavor and gelatin that gives the finished soup body.
Knuckle of veal
Adds gelatin from bones and connective tissue, giving the stock a rich, silky body.
Butter
Carries browning of the meat and adds richness to the soup.
Onions
Build savory, sweet depth as they cook slowly in the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the beef and ham without burning them. Gentle browning creates savory, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Burnt meat turns bitter and carries that bitterness into the whole soup.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, meat, ham, butter, onion, carrot):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, meat, ham, butter, onion, carrot. 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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