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A Roast Beef and Boiled Turkey Soup

A soup made from turkey liquor, turkey and beef bones, vegetables, and flour, served over bread dice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Beef and Boiled Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large soup pot, combine the turkey liquor, turkey bones, and beef bones.

  2. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, onions, cloves, pepper, salt, and tomatoes if using.

  3. Boil for 4 hours, then strain the mixture.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the soup to the pot and mix the flour with a little cold water.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the soup and bring to a boil.

  3. Place the bread dice in the bottom of a tureen and pour the soup over it.

  4. 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a fuller body.
Bones of beef
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Bones of turkey
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Bread, cut into dice
Soaks up broth in the tureen, adding body and a soft texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold water before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules hydrate unevenly at the surface. Whisking it into a smooth slurry with cold water first lets it disperse evenly so the soup thickens 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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