Skip to main content
Main

Shin of Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shin, vegetables, and sago pearls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Shin of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove any fat from the meat and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a stewpan with the salt and cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim thoroughly.

  4. Clean the vegetables and cut them in halves.

  5. Add the vegetables, peppercorns, thyme, and a few drops of caramel.

  6. Simmer the soup gently for 2 hours.

  7. Strain the soup and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fat, return the soup to the saucepan, and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the sago and boil gently until it turns clear, about 5 to 6 minutes.

  3. Serve with dry toast.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean shin of beef
Supplies the meat flavour and body of the broth as it simmers.
Sago
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch swells and turns clear when boiled.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim thoroughly after the first boil. Foam and fat rising at the start contain impurities that would cloud the broth and taste greasy, so removing them yields a clearer, cleaner soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, carrot, turnip, clove, celery, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, carrot, turnip, clove, celery, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes