Skip to main content
Main

Wrexham Soup

A beef and vegetable soup baked in a crock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Wrexham Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pare the vegetables and cut them into thick slices.

  2. Slice the meat thinly.

  3. Make a bouquet of parsley and herbs, adding 1 oz of celery.

  4. In a saucer, mix 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the ingredients in an earthen crock or jar, alternating with the seasoning mix.

  2. Pour in enough cold water to fill the jar, cover it, and seal with a paste of flour and water.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350 °F/175 °C) for five hours.

  4. Remove the bouquet before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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 soup beef
Provides meat flavor and savory richness as it slowly cooks in the liquid.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, helping build the broth's savory flavor.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften during the long bake.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavor that deepens over slow cooking.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly before baking. A tight seal traps steam and keeps the water from evaporating during the five-hour bake, so the meat and vegetables stay moist and the broth concentrates gently rather than drying out or scorching.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes