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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shank meat, bones, vegetables, spices, and optional vermicelli or 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 stock

  1. Cut all the lean beef off the shank.

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

  3. Add the bones and cover with water.

  4. Cover the kettle tightly.

  5. Cook slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  6. Strain the soup through a colander.

  7. Let the strained soup sit overnight to remove fat.

Finish the soup

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

  2. Add the fried vegetables to the soup along with sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed.

  3. Cook slowly for an 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
Provides meat flavor and body to the soup as it cooks down.
Beef suet
Browned first to add rich fat and savory flavor to the kettle.
Carrot
Fried until browned to add sweetness and depth to the soup.
Onion
Fried until browned to add savory sweetness and aroma.
Small turnip
Fried until browned to add earthy sweetness and depth.
Allspice kernels
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Let the strained soup sit overnight to remove fat. Fat solidifies as the stock cools, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping the rest leaves a greasy broth, and removing fat before the vegetables are added keeps the final soup clear and light.

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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