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A Cheap Palatable Meat Soup

A simple soup made from roasts and steak trimmings, beans, tomato, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Cheap Palatable Meat Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Collect

  1. Save all bones and trimmings from roasts and steaks.

  2. Store them in a cool place for several days.

Make the soup

  1. Place the bones and trimmings in a kettle with 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Add ½ cup of dry beans and 1 large ripe tomato.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer until the beans are tender.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 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

Bones and trimmings
Release flavor and body into the broth as they simmer in water.
Dry beans
Add starch and substance, thickening the broth and making the soup filling.
Ripe tomato
Adds acidity and a fresh, savory note that balances the rich meat flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are tender. Dry beans soften only after long, steady simmering. Stopping early leaves them firm and unevenly cooked, so the soup's texture suffers.

“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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