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Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shin, vegetables, and rice, simmered slowly and served hot.

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. In the morning, place the shin piece of beef in 6 quarts of cold water.

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

  3. At noon, add the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, turnips, cabbage, and any other vegetables.

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

  5. One hour before finishing, add the rice.

  6. Strain the soup through a colander and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. The next morning, remove the solidified fat from the surface.

  2. To serve, add a little water, season with salt and pepper, and 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

Shin piece of beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness, rounding out the savoury broth.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and thicken the soup slightly as their starch releases.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells, adding body and thickening the soup.

The step that matters

Chilling and removing the fat. Cooling the strained soup overnight lets fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping this leaves the soup greasy, since fat stays liquid while the soup is hot.

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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