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Beef Soup

A hearty beef broth with vegetables and cubed meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stew-pan, add the shin bone and water. Boil slowly for 4 hours.

  2. Cool the broth and remove the layer of fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Cut the meat into small cubes.

  2. In the stew-pan, combine the strained gravy, meat, and finely chopped vegetables.

  3. Simmer slowly for 5 hours.

  4. Remove the herbs and serve 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 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

Shin bone of beef
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth during long, slow boiling.
Water
Forms the broth that extracts flavor from the bone and vegetables.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the broth during long simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body as they soften into the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color as they soften during simmering.

The step that matters

Cooling the broth and removing the fat. Fat that is not skimmed off after cooling will float and make the soup greasy. Once chilled, the fat solidifies on the surface and lifts off cleanly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, turnip, carrot, 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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