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Shin of Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shin, vegetables, barley, and a flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shin of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the beef in cold water.

  2. Rub the salt and pepper into the meat.

  3. Place the meat in a soup pot and add water equal to the weight of the meat in quarts.

Simmer the soup

  1. Bring to a boil over moderate heat, skimming off any scum.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Add the grated carrot, sliced turnip, leek, parsley, halved potatoes, and washed barley.

  4. Cover and boil gently for 1 hour.

  5. Mix the flour with water to make a thickening, then stir it into the soup.

  6. Cover and cook for an additional 15 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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

Shin of beef
Provides rich meaty flavor and gelatin that gives the broth body as it simmers.
Pearl barley
Swells as it cooks, adding texture and thickening the soup.
Wheat flour
Thickens the broth when stirred in as a slurry with water.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering, adding starch and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after the boil. Foam that rises as the broth comes to a boil contains impurities that can make the soup cloudy and off-flavored if left in.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, leek, parsley, barley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, leek, parsley, barley. 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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