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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, turnip, and optional okra and corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and okra share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the shin of beef slowly all day.

  2. When cold, skim off all the tallow.

  3. Put the beef back on the fire and boil gently for 6 hours with the tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and turnip.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Chop the meat and add it to the soup, removing the bones.

  6. Add okra and green corn if desired.

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. Turnip + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Slow boiling turns the tough connective tissue tender and releases rich flavour into the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savoury depth to the broth as they cook down.
Potatoes
Soften during the long simmer and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth as they cook through.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly peppery flavour and some body to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the tallow when cold. Fat that rises and sets on cooled broth is easy to remove in one solid layer. Skimming it removes excess grease, leaving a cleaner, lighter-tasting soup.

Swap the okra

The recipe marks okra as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, potato, carrot, turnip, pepper, corn):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrathe original
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, potato, carrot, turnip, pepper, corn. 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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