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A Roast Beep and Boiled Turkey Soup

A hearty soup made with turkey broth, beef bones, carrots, turnips, onion, garlic, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Roast Beep and Boiled Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the broth

  1. Combine turkey broth and beef bones in a large soup pot.

  2. Add carrots, turnips, onion, garlic cloves, pepper, salt, and tomatoes if using.

  3. Boil for 4 hours, then strain the solids out.

Thicken the soup

  1. Return the liquid to the pot.

  2. Mix flour with a little cold water and stir into the soup.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil again.

Serve

  1. Place diced toasted bread in the bottom of a tureen and pour the soup over it.

  2. Add a little soy sauce for color.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey broth
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavors.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the long-simmered broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and earthy flavor as they cook down.
Flour
Starch thickens the broth so it has a slightly fuller body.
Soy sauce
Darkens the broth and adds a savory, salty depth.

The step that matters

Adding the flour slurry. Flour mixed with cold water and stirred in evenly disperses without clumping. Starch granules must be separated before heating, then the soup must reach a boil so they swell and thicken it smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, pepper. 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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