Skip to main content
Main

Tapioca Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, beef bones, vegetables, and tapioca.

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

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tapioca Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Slice the meat and vegetables, leaving out the tomatoes, and place them in the water.

  2. Boil slowly for 4 hours, skimming well at the end of the second hour.

  3. Add the tomatoes after 2 hours of boiling.

Strain and season

  1. Strain the soup, remove the meat, and rub the vegetables through a colander.

  2. Cool and skim the fat, then season with sugar, pepper, salt, and minced herbs.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the soup until boiling, then add the tapioca and stir until clear before serving.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Lean veal
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth, giving body to the soup.
Beef bones
Add collagen and marrow flavour, enriching the broth as they simmer slowly.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and colour, and their pulp thickens the strained soup.
Granulated tapioca
Its starch thickens the hot soup and turns it clear and glossy when stirred in.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Add the tapioca and stir until clear. Tapioca starch must be heated in the liquid to swell and thicken it. If the soup is not kept at a boil while stirring, the starch stays grainy and the soup remains cloudy and thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, ham, carrot, tomato, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, ham, carrot, tomato, sugar, 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.

More tapioca soup recipes

Creamy 6Tomato 3 See all 56 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes