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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shin, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, turnips, cabbage, rice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the shin piece in 6 quarts of cold water.

  2. Boil slowly for several hours, replenishing with boiling water if necessary.

  3. Add the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, turnips, cabbage, and any other vegetables.

  4. Boil for 4 more hours, stirring frequently during the last hour or two.

  5. Add the rice.

  6. Strain through a colander.

Chill and finish

  1. Let cool overnight.

  2. Remove the cake of fat from the surface.

  3. Add a little water.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Boil once before serving hot.

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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Beef shin
Slow simmering draws flavour and gelatin from the bone and connective tissue into the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup its tangy, rich character.
Potatoes
Break down partly during long cooking, thickening the broth and adding starchy body.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells, adding body and softening the soup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for several hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the shin break down into gelatin, enriching the broth. A hard rolling boil cloudies the broth and toughens the meat, so keep it at a slow simmer and top up with boiling water as it reduces.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, potato, onion, turnip, rice, pepper):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, potato, onion, turnip, rice, 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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