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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with carrots, onions, turnip, spices, and optional vermicelli or pearl barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the lean beef from the shank and brown it in a kettle with a little beef suet. Add the bones.

  2. Cover with water and cover the kettle tightly. Cook slowly until the meat falls from the bones.

  3. Strain through a colander. Let the broth sit overnight to allow the fat to rise and solidify.

Finish the soup

  1. On the day of serving, brown the sliced carrot, onion, and turnip in the broth. Add sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed.

  2. Cook slowly for 1 hour. Strain the soup again before serving.

  3. If using vermicelli or pearl barley, soak them in water beforehand.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Lean beef from the shank
Provides the meat flavour and body of the broth as it cooks down slowly.
Beef suet
Adds fat for browning the beef and carries savoury, rounded flavour into the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma when browned in the broth.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness when browned in the broth.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Chilling the broth overnight and removing the fat. Fat that is not lifted off once it has solidified can make the soup greasy and heavy on the palate. Letting the broth rest cold lets the fat rise and set so it can be removed cleanly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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