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A Cheap Soup

A hearty beef soup with turnips, onions, tomatoes, rice, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Cheap Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Heat dripping and sugar in a soup pot.

  2. Add the beef and sliced onions; stir until browned.

  3. Pour in the water, then add turnips and herbs.

  4. Cook for one hour, then remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in tomatoes and rice, and simmer for two hours.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Cook for an additional ten minutes, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Browned strips add savory depth and meaty flavor to the broth.
Onions
Softened and browned onions add sweetness and aroma to the base.
Turnips
Diced turnips soften during cooking and add body and mild sweetness.
Rice
Rice thickens the soup as its starch releases during simmering.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes add acidity and moisture that brighten the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the beef and onions. Searing the beef and onions until browned creates Maillard flavors that give the broth its depth. Pale, steamed meat produces a flatter, greyer-tasting soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, rice, tomato, sugar, pepper, celery. 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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