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Wrexham Soup

A hearty beef and vegetable soup baked with herbs, salt, sugar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 (175°C) 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. Cut the meat into thin slices.

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

  4. Mix together the salt, sugar, and pepper in a small bowl.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the ingredients in an earthen crock or jar, alternating with the salt mixture.

  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 at 350°F (175°C) for five hours.

  4. Remove the bouquet before serving the soup.

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

Soup beef
Provides the meat flavor and richness that build the broth over the long bake.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and release their flavor into the broth.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and body, rounding out the broth's flavor.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup during the long, slow cooking.
Turnips
Add earthy flavor and body that thickens the broth slightly as they cook.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly before baking. A tight seal traps steam and keeps the liquid from evaporating during the long five-hour bake, so the broth concentrates and the flavors blend instead of drying out.

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.

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