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Rich Brown Soup

A hearty beef soup simmered with onions, cloves, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rich Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stick the beef with the cloves.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Fry the sliced onions in butter, chop them, and spread over the meat in the soup pot.

Stew and strain

  1. Pour in the water and stew slowly for 5 to 6 hours, skimming well.

  2. When the meat has dissolved into shreds, strain it and return the liquid to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the claret or port wine and simmer slowly until dinner time.

  2. When the soup is reduced to 3 quarts, it is ready to 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Lean fresh beef
Breaks down into shreds over long stewing, giving the soup its body and meaty flavour.
Onions
Sweeten and deepen the broth as they soften and brown in butter before stewing.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth, rounding out the rich broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skimming during the long stew. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise as the beef cooks, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting over the 5 to 6 hours of stewing.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, pepper, nutmeg, onion, butter, port wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, pepper, nutmeg, onion, butter, port wine. 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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