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Family Soup

A hearty beef soup with carrots, parsnip, onion, turnips, tomatoes, celery, cabbage, and marjoram.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into three pieces and wash it well.

  2. In a large pot, combine the beef and water, adding the salt.

Simmer the soup

  1. Bring to a hard boil, skimming off the scum that rises.

  2. Cover the pot and reduce heat to simmer, adding coals to maintain heat.

  3. At 9 o'clock, add the carrots, parsnip, onion, turnips, tomatoes, celery, and cabbage.

  4. Simmer the soup until 2 o'clock, skimming regularly.

  5. If serving the meat, remove the best parts two hours before dinner.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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

Beef shin or leg
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and tender meat.
Water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor from the beef and vegetables into the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, and hold their shape during long simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, enriching the broth's flavor.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and mild sweetness as it softens in the broth.
Sweet marjoram
Adds aromatic herbal flavor to the broth while it simmers in muslin.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after the boil. Scum rising from the beef is coagulated protein and impurities. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and free of off flavors.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsnip, onion, turnip, celery, cabbage. 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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