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Soup Royal

A hearty beef and calf head soup with tongue, brain cakes, egg balls, peas, carrots, potatoes, turnip, onion, prunes, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup Royal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the shin of beef into small pieces, leaving the tongue and calf's head meat whole.

  2. Add pepper and salt to taste, boil in 8 cups of water, skimming off the scum.

  3. Remove the tongue and calf's head meat when tender, continue boiling the shin until dissolved.

  4. Strain the broth, cool it, remove the fat, and return it to the pot with soup herbs, salt, and pepper.

  5. Boil again and strain once more, then set aside.

Prepare the garnishes

  1. Slice the tongue into ⅛ inch thick pieces, trim into diamond shapes, and cut the calf's head meat into 1 inch squares and strips 1.5 inches long and ½ inch wide.

  2. Combine the tongue, calf's head meat, fried brain cakes, egg balls, and force meat balls in a bowl.

Finish the soup

  1. In another bowl, mix green peas, potatoes, carrots, turnip, onion, ground split peas, soup herbs, pepper, salt, orange pulp, and citrus peels.

  2. Add this mixture to the broth and simmer until everything is heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Breaks down during long boiling to enrich the broth with body and flavour.
Split peas or gram dal
Roasted and ground, they thicken the broth and add a nutty, earthy depth.
Green peas
Hold their shape and add sweetness and colour to the finished soup.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and give the soup a starchy, thickening body.
Orange pulp and peels
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that lift the rich broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum while the broth boils. Impurities rise to the surface as the broth heats; removing them early keeps the broth clear and free of off flavours.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, egg, carrot, potato, turnip, onion):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, egg, carrot, potato, turnip, onion. 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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