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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shank, vegetables, 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 off the shank and fry it in a little beef suet in a kettle until browned.

  2. Add the bones and cover with water.

  3. Cover the kettle tightly.

  4. Cook slowly until the meat falls from the bones.

  5. Strain through a colander and let it sit overnight.

Add the vegetables and spices

  1. The next day, fry the sliced carrot, onion, and turnip until browned.

  2. Add the sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed to the vegetables.

  3. Cook slowly in the soup for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the soup again before serving.

Prepare the optional starch

  1. If using vermicelli or pearl barley, soak in water before adding.

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 meaty flavour and body of the soup as it cooks down.
Beef suet
Adds fat for browning the beef and carries savoury flavour.
Beef bones
Release collagen and flavour into the water during slow cooking, giving body to the broth.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Carrot
Browns to add natural sweetness and aroma to the soup.

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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