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Beef Soup

A spiced beef soup made with shank, bones, and aromatic spices, simmered slowly and strained.

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

Make the broth

  1. Cut all the lean beef off the shank.

  2. Heat a little beef suet in a kettle until browned. Add the bones to the kettle.

  3. Cover the kettle with water and seal tightly. Cook slowly until the meat falls from the bones.

  4. Strain the broth through a colander and let it sit overnight to remove fat.

Season and finish

  1. Fry a sliced carrot, onion, and small turnip until browned.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon sugar, a blade of mace, 6 cloves, 12 kernels of allspice, and 1 teaspoon celery seed.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly in the soup for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the soup again before serving.

  5. If using vermicelli or pear barley, soak them in water beforehand.

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 beef from the shank
Supplies the meat that gives the soup its savory, beefy flavor.
Beef suet
Adds fat for browning the bones and carries flavor into the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns in the soup base.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma as it browns.
Small turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the soup base as it browns.

The step that matters

Straining the broth overnight. Fat rises and solidifies on cooled broth, so letting it sit overnight lets it be lifted off, leaving a cleaner, less greasy soup.

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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