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Shin of Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shin, vegetables, barley, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shin of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Have the butcher saw the shin bone into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Wash the meat in cold water.

  3. Mix salt and pepper and rub the mixture into the meat.

  4. Place the meat in a soup pot.

  5. Add enough water to match the weight of the meat.

Simmer the soup

  1. Bring the water to a boil, skim off any scum, and cover the pot.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours, then skim again.

  3. Add the carrot, turnip, leek, parsley, potatoes, and barley, and cover the pot.

  4. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  5. Add another tablespoon of salt.

  6. Add a thickening made from flour and water, stirring it in gradually.

  7. Cover the pot and cook for an additional 15 minutes 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue and bone, giving the broth body and rich flavour.
Pearl barley
Its starch thickens the broth slightly and adds a chewy texture.
Potatoes
Starch softens during simmering, adding body and making the soup more filling.
Wheat flour
Stirred into water and added at the end, it thickens the broth into a smoother consistency.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour thickening gradually. Flour clumps if dumped in at once. Mixing it with water first and adding it slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse and thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, leek, parsley, barley. 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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