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Dieppe Soup

A hearty beef soup with vegetables and farina, simmered slowly for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dieppe Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Heat the dripping in a pan.

  2. Fry the beef with onions, sugar, pepper, and salt until browned.

  3. Transfer the beef mixture to a soup pot.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the water, carrots, and celery.

  2. Cook slowly for at least 4 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Cool the soup.

  5. Skim off the fat.

  6. Season the soup.

  7. Add the farina.

  8. Simmer for an additional 30 minutes, stirring regularly.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Beef
Slow simmering breaks down shin connective tissue, giving the broth body and rich flavour.
Onions
Browning them with the beef builds savoury, sweet depth in the finished soup.
Farina
Starch that thickens the soup as it simmers, giving it a lightly body-rich texture.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness and aromatic flavour into the broth during long cooking.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after cooling. Fat that rises and solidifies when the soup cools can be lifted off cleanly. Skimming it before reheating keeps the broth light and prevents a greasy mouthfeel.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, sugar, celery, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, sugar, celery, milk, 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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