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Soup Extract

A concentrated beef broth made by simmering beef, water, salt, herbs, and spices for several hours, then straining and drying into a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Soup Extract

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine 1 gallon of cold water and the beef in a soup kettle.

  2. Simmer gently.

  3. Remove any scum that forms.

  4. Add the salt, dry crust, pepper, herbs, and garlic.

  5. Continue to simmer until the soup jellies, about 5 hours.

  6. Strain the soup through a coarse muslin bag or sieve into an earthen vessel.

  7. When cool, remove the fat.

Make the extract

  1. Pour the soup into cups.

  2. Heat the cups gradually by pouring water around them.

  3. Avoid water getting into the cups.

  4. Cook slowly until the extract jellies like glue.

  5. Cool the jelly.

  6. Turn out the jelly.

  7. Dry the jelly in the sun all day.

  8. Pack the jelly between unglazed paper in well-covered tin boxes.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Beef + garlictop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Breaks down during long simmering, releasing gelatin that makes the soup set into a jelly.
Dry crust
Adds body and flavour to the stock as it simmers with the beef.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the stock and draws out flavour from the beef and herbs.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the extract jellies like glue. Gentle heat concentrates the stock and dissolves collagen into gelatin. Too much heat or water entering the cups can scorch the mixture or stop it setting into a firm jelly.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove. 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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