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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with vegetables, barley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crack the beef bone into small pieces and wash the beef.

  2. Place the beef in a kettle with cold water and bring to a boil.

Simmer the soup

  1. Boil for about 2 hours until tender.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then boil for 1 hour longer.

  3. Add minced carrot, turnips, rice or barley, celery, and summer savory.

  4. After 15 minutes, add the diced potatoes and boil for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the meat from the soup, discard the bones, and arrange the meat on a dish.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot with mustard and catsup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour and becomes tender during the long simmer.
Beef bone
Releases collagen and flavour into the water, adding body to the broth.
Rice or pearl barley
Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds a soft, chewy texture.
Potatoes
Starch softens into the broth, adding body and making it heartier.
Carrot and turnips
Add natural sweetness and earthy flavour as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Bringing the beef to a gentle, long simmer. Boiling hard toughens the meat proteins and makes the broth cloudy, while slow simmering lets collagen break down so the beef becomes tender and the broth clear.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, rice, celery, potato):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, rice, celery, potato. 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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