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Beef Soup

A hearty beef broth made with shin, water, carrots, onions, turnip, cloves, allspice, pepper, salt, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the bone of the shin of beef in two.

  2. Add 8 quarts of water and let it stand on a warm hearth for 3 hours.

  3. Boil it slowly, then set aside overnight.

  4. In the morning, remove the fat.

Season and finish

  1. Add the carrots, onions, turnip, cloves, allspice, pepper, and salt, then boil thoroughly.

  2. When done, strain the soup and add the brown sugar.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides the meat and bone that flavour the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they cook.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma to the broth.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture to the cooked soup.
Brown sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness and mellow molasses flavour to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, clove, allspice, pepper, sugar. 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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