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A Brown Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, water, cloves, pepper, salt, carrots, turnip, onions, celery, toasted bread, soy sauce, flour, mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Brown Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the beef into a square piece and place it in a pot with water, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Add the diced carrots, turnip, chopped onions, chopped celery, and toasted bread to the pot.

  4. Boil for an additional 2 hours.

  5. If the meat is not brown enough, remove it and add soy sauce.

Stew and finish

  1. For the next day, cut the meat and vegetables into dice.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with pepper, salt, cloves, and just enough water to cover.

  3. Stew gently for 2-3 hours.

  4. Remove the meat, mix flour with water and mustard, then stir into the gravy.

  5. Boil once and pour over the meat and vegetables.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Provides the main meat and rich, savory flavor that the soup is built on.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften during the long boil.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.
Celery
Adds aromatic depth and savory flavor to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and vegetables.
Toasted bread
Adds body and helps give the broth a fuller, toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the meat with soy sauce. If the meat is not brown enough, the broth stays pale and less savory. Soy sauce adds color and deeper flavor through its dark pigments and glutamates, but it should be added in small amounts to taste so the soup does not turn too salty or dark.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, bread. 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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