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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with tomatoes, onions, turnips, carrot, herbs, and optional vermicelli or dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Crack the bone of the shin of beef and remove the tough outer skin.

  2. Place the beef in a kettle with 6-8 quarts of water and boil for about 4 hours until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the beef from the liquid and add salt, tomatoes, onions, turnips, carrot, sugar, marjoram, thyme, red pepper, and celery to the broth.

  2. Thicken the soup with vermicelli, macaroni, noodles, or drop dumplings as desired.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and, with the bone, body as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a tangy, rounded flavour to the broth.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they cook into the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the soup, adding body to the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and rounds out the flavour.
Vermicelli or macaroni
Optional starch that thickens the soup slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boiling the beef until tender. Beef shin is tough connective tissue; long, gentle simmering converts collagen to gelatin, which makes the meat tender and gives the broth body. Too brief a cook leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, turnip, carrot, sugar, marjoram, thyme. 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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