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Soup

Clear Soup with Raw Meat, No. II

A clear soup made with raw beef, carrot, turnip, onion, and cold stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Clear Soup with Raw Meat, No. II

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the raw beef in a sausage machine.

  2. Cut the carrot, turnip, and onion into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Whisk the minced meat and vegetables into the cold stock.

  2. Heat the saucepan over the fire and bring to a boil while whisking. Remove the whisk just before boiling.

  3. Once boiling, move the saucepan to the side of the fire for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the soup carefully through a thick cloth until clear.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 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

Raw beef steak
Its proteins coagulate and collect impurities, which clarifies the stock as it heats.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and earthy aroma to the finished broth.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as its flavour releases into the stock.

The step that matters

Remove the whisk just before boiling. Whisking keeps the meat and vegetables suspended in the stock. Stopping before the boil lets the protein particles begin to coagulate and gather impurities. If the stock is stirred during the rise to a boil, the particles break up and the soup stays cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip. 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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