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English Soup

A hearty beef soup with chicken bones, vegetables, and vermicelli, simmered slowly for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

English Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the beef strips, broken chicken bones, and 3 quarts of cold water in a large soup pot.

  2. Heat gradually.

  3. Once the soup boils, skim the surface.

  4. Add the fried onions, chopped vegetables, and 3 more quarts of cold water.

  5. Cover and simmer for 5 hours, ensuring it never boils fast and the liquid doesn't reduce below 3 quarts.

  6. Remove the meat and bones.

  7. Strain the vegetables through a colander.

  8. Strain the soup again through a wire strainer into a cleaned kettle.

Finish the soup

  1. Season to taste.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes after it boils.

  3. Break the vermicelli into short lengths.

  4. Add the vermicelli to the soup after reserving 2 quarts for stock.

  5. Cook gently for 12 minutes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth during long, gentle simmering.
Vermicelli
Thin pasta that absorbs broth and adds body to the finished soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth once fried and simmered.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. A rolling boil makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat and emulsify fat into it. A slow simmer keeps the stock clear and tender.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, chicken, carrot, celery, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, chicken, carrot, celery, 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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