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A Brown Beef Soup

A beef soup with vegetables, toasted bread, and a mustard‑flour gravy.

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 shape.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with water, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil for 3 hours.

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

  5. Boil for an additional 2 hours.

  6. If the meat is not brown enough, remove it.

  7. Add a little soy sauce.

Stew and finish

  1. For the next day, dice 2 carrots, 1 turnip, and 2 onions.

  2. Put the meat and vegetables in a saucepan, adding pepper, salt, cloves, and just enough water to cover the meat.

  3. Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Remove the meat.

  5. Mix flour with water and 2 teaspoons of mustard.

  6. Stir the mixture into the gravy.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Pour the gravy and vegetables over the meat.

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, which browns and releases flavour into the broth as it cooks.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during long simmering.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and sweetness as they break down while simmering.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and prevents it from toughening, while a hard boil can make the broth cloudy and the meat stringy.

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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