Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Good and Cheap Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and brown
Chop the tops, peelings, and shells of your vegetables into small pieces.
Brown them in a frying pan with the dripping.
Transfer the browned vegetables and dripping to a large pot.
Make the soup
Add the strained liquor from your collected vegetable scraps to the pot.
Add the meat and stew gently until tender, about 1-2 hours.
Strain off the liquor, beating the vegetables through a sieve.
Return the liquor to the pot and add the shelled peas.
Stew for another 30 minutes, or longer if peas are very old.
Finish
Skim off any scum and remove fat before serving.
Thicken the soup with a little flour and flavor with catsup.
Optionally, add dumplings when adding the peas.
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.
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Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Peas + mushroomtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together890 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Beef + peastop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,044 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,253 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,837 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Ox-cheek or beef shin
- Long, gentle stewing breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and enriching the broth.
- Vegetable tops, peelings, and shells
- Browning and simmering them builds the main vegetable flavor and color of the broth.
- Dripping
- Fat carries flavor and helps brown the vegetables in the first step.
- Peas
- Add sweetness and body to the soup as they cook into the liquid.
- Flour
- Starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the soup.
- Mushroom or walnut catsup
- Adds a savory, concentrated depth of flavor to the finished soup.
The step that matters
Browning the vegetable scraps in the dripping. Browning creates savory, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. If the scraps scorch, they turn bitter and that bitterness carries into the whole pot.
Swap the peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, mushroom):
- Chestnutfits better
- Sesamefits better
- Beansfits better
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, mushroom. 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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