Name: Beef Tea, with Noodles
Ingredients: 3 lbs lean beef, minced; 2 onions, minced; 2 turnips, minced; 2 carrots, minced; 2 cloves; 2 quarts plus 1 pint water; a good handful of noodles

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Tea, with Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

In a large pot, combine the minced vegetables and water.
Bring to a boil and reduce to 2 quarts.
Drain the liquid and pour it over the finely minced beef.
Simmer for 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

Add the noodles

Season the broth and add the noodles.
Cook gently for 20 minutes.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,233 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 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 beef: Provides the main savoury flavour and body in the broth.
Onions: Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the liquid.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and earthy depth to the broth.
Noodles: Add starch and bulk, soaking up some broth and giving the dish substance.

The step that matters

Reducing the water to 2 quarts. Boiling the vegetables and water down to the stated volume concentrates their flavour. Too much evaporation makes the broth bitter or salty, while too little leaves it weak.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, turnip, carrot):

Celeryfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, turnip, carrot. 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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Beef Tea, with Noodles