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Beef Soup

A hearty beef broth made with shank, suet, water, vegetables, spices, and optional vermicelli or pearl barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 lean shank beef into pieces.

  2. In a kettle, heat a little beef suet and fry the beef until browned.

  3. Add the bones and cover with water.

  4. Cover the kettle tightly and cook slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  5. Strain the soup through a colander and let it sit overnight to remove fat.

Finish the soup

  1. On the day of serving, fry a sliced carrot, onion, and small turnip until browned.

  2. Add sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed to the vegetables.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly in the soup for one hour, then strain again before serving.

  4. If using vermicelli or pearl barley, soak them in water before adding.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean shank beef
Provides rich meat flavor and collagen that softens into the broth during slow cooking.
Beef suet
Adds fat for frying the beef, carrying flavor and promoting browning.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns with the onion and turnip.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma when fried until browned.
Small turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the finished soup.
Celery seed
Contributes a warm, aromatic savory flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the beef slowly until browned and then slowly simmering. Browning the beef develops savory flavors through the Maillard reaction, while slow, covered cooking gently breaks down collagen so the meat becomes tender without the broth turning cloudy or greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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