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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with onions, garlic, carrot, cabbage, potatoes, and tomatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Boil the beef in water for four hours, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

Add the vegetables

  1. Forty minutes before serving, add the onions, whole cloves, sliced carrot and sliced cabbage.

  2. Add the potatoes and tomatoes, and cook until tender.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Beef
Long gentle boiling breaks down tough connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavoring the broth.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory aroma into the broth as they cook.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and a firm texture that holds up to simmering.
Cabbage
Contributes soft, mild body and bulk to the soup.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and gives the broth more body as they cook.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fruity flavor that balances the rich beef broth.

The step that matters

Adding the vegetables forty minutes before serving. Carrot and cabbage cook much faster than beef. Adding them too early can turn them mushy, while adding them too late leaves them crunchy and underdone.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, cabbage, potato, tomato, pepper):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, cabbage, potato, tomato, 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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