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Family Soup

A hearty beef soup with turnips, carrots, onions, celery, and bones simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into strips.

  2. Fry the beef strips with one sliced onion in drippings until browned but not dry.

  3. Slice the carrots, the turnips, and the remaining onion, and chop the celery.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the meat, fried onion, chopped vegetables, bones, and gravy from the frying pan in a soup pot.

  2. Add the water.

  3. Cook slowly for four hours after boiling.

  4. Pour off the liquid, ensuring at least five quarts remain.

  5. Remove the meat and bones.

  6. Season the remaining liquid highly.

Chill and finish

  1. Store in a cold place.

  2. Pulp the vegetables into the portion of soup reserved for today.

  3. Cool the soup.

  4. Skim the soup.

  5. Season the soup.

  6. Bring to a gentle boil 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Browning builds savory flavor, and long slow cooking makes the meat tender and moist.
Cracked bones
Long simmering draws gelatin and body from the bones into the broth.
Onions
Frying softens and sweetens them, adding aroma and depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness, and pulping them thickens the soup.
Celery
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the beef strips. Frying until browned but not dry builds deep savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. If the meat dries out and scorches, it turns tough and bitter, and that flavor carries into the whole soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, 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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