Skip to main content
Main

Clear Beef Soup

A clear soup made from beef, veal, pork, butter, onions, cloves, mace, parsley, and burnt sugar for coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Clear Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef and veal in a pot with enough water to cover.

  2. Skim the surface as it heats.

  3. Add the pork strips, butter, and onions studded with cloves.

  4. Simmer for at least 5 hours, skimming as necessary.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the parsley half an hour before serving.

  2. Strain through a clean cloth and color with burnt sugar 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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Releases collagen during long simmering, adding body and a silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Pork strips
Add savory richness and fat that rounds out the flavor of the broth.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook in the broth.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives a smoother mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the surface as it heats and during simmering. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that would otherwise cloud the broth and make it greasy, so the soup stays clear.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, pork, butter, onion, clove, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, pork, butter, onion, clove, parsley. 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

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes