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
Make the broth
Cut the meat very fine and crack the bones well.
Place the meat and bones in a pot with 1 quart of water and set it to come slowly to a boil.
Add the remaining 2 quarts of cold water and let it boil slowly for 3 hours, covering for the first 2 hours and slightly lifting the lid for the last hour.
Prepare and cook the vegetables
Wash and peel the turnip, carrot, and onion.
Scrape the celery and wash the cabbage.
Cut all vegetables into dice and soak them in salted cold water for 30 minutes.
Stew the carrot in a small pot by itself until tender.
Drain the carrot and set it aside to cool.
Boil the other vegetables until they are soft.
Strain the other vegetables and press them to extract their strength.
Return the vegetable pulp to the saucepan.
Finish the soup
Add a little salt to the saucepan.
Bring the soup to a boil to clear it.
Skim the soup.
Add pepper and salt to taste.
Boil the soup covered for 20 minutes.
Strain the soup into an earthenware basin.
Let the soup cool until the fat rises to the surface.
Remove the fat.
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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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together16,012 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lean beef
- Gives the broth its main meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
- Marrow bone
- Adds richness and body to the broth as it cooks slowly.
- Ham
- Adds savoury depth to the broth.
- Onion
- Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and cooks into the broth.
- Carrot
- Adds sweetness and colour to the soup.
The step that matters
Keep the broth at a slow boil. A vigorous boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds the broth, while a gentle simmer keeps it clearer and easier to skim.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, turnip, carrot, cabbage, celery, pepper):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Lettucefits about as well
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, turnip, carrot, cabbage, celery, pepper. 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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