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A Good Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with soup bone, water, salt, onion, potatoes, turnip, parsley, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,842 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Good Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine soup bone and cold water in a large pot.

  2. Add salt.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

Add vegetables

  1. Add chopped onion, potatoes, turnip, and parsley to the pot.

  2. Continue to boil until vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Whisk eggs until light in a soup tureen.

  2. Gradually strain soup into the tureen, stirring gently to prevent eggs from curdling.

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. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 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 the long simmer, giving the broth body.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch that gives the soup more body.
Eggs
Whisked and stirred into the hot strained soup, they thicken it lightly and add richness.

The step that matters

Gradually straining soup into the eggs. Adding hot soup slowly while stirring gently warms the eggs evenly. Pouring too fast or without stirring can scramble the eggs and cause curdling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, turnip, parsley, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, turnip, parsley, egg. 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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