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A hearty beef soup with vegetables and optional thickening such as rice, vermicelli, macaroni, or dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,265 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine 1 pound of meat with 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours to extract the meat's flavor.

Finish the soup

  1. After 3 hours, add chopped vegetables and seasonings.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Add thickening ingredients last 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. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main flavor and savory body of the broth as it simmers.
Chopped vegetables
Add sweetness, aroma and texture as they soften in the broth.
Thickening (rice, vermicelli, macaroni, or dumplings)
Absorbs liquid and swells as it cooks, giving the soup body and substance.

The step that matters

Simmer the meat gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer draws flavor from the meat into the water slowly, while a hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth. Keeping the heat low gives a clearer, more flavorful base for the rest of the soup.

“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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