Skip to main content
Main

Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef shank, vegetables, spices, and optional vermicelli or pear barley.

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

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut all the lean beef off the shank.

  2. In a kettle, heat a little beef suet until browned.

  3. Add the bones, cover with water, and seal the kettle tightly.

  4. Cook slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  5. Strain through a colander and let it sit overnight to remove fat.

Finish the soup

  1. On the day of serving, fry the sliced carrot, onion, and turnip until browned.

  2. Add sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed to the vegetables.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly in the soup for 1 hour, then strain again before serving.

  4. If using vermicelli or pear barley, soak in water before adding.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Beef suet
Adds fat for browning the kettle and enriches the broth's flavour.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks down.
Onion
Browns to build savoury depth in the finished soup.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture as it cooks in the soup.

The step that matters

Letting the stock sit overnight. Cooling the strained stock lets the fat rise and solidify on top, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping this leaves the soup greasy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice. 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.

More beef soup recipes

Clear 34Brown 23Quick 12French 6Barley 5Economical 4 See all 245 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes