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A Roast Beef and Boiled Turkey Soup

A hearty soup made with turkey and beef bones, vegetables, and flour thickening.

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 soup

  1. Combine the turkey liquor, turkey bones, beef bones, carrots, turnips, onions, cloves, pepper, salt, and tomatoes in a soup pot.

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

  3. Return the soup to the pot.

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

  5. Bring the soup to a boil.

  6. Add a little soy sauce for color.

Serve

  1. Place the diced bread in the bottom of a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread.

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 bones
Release flavor and gelatin into the broth during long simmering.
Beef bones
Add savory depth and body to the broth during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly when stirred in and brought to a boil.
Bread
Soaks up broth at the bottom of the tureen, giving the soup body and softness.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release flavor into the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the soup. Flour mixed with cold water must be stirred in evenly; otherwise it can clump, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, lightly thickened broth.

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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