Skip to main content
Main

Beef Soup

A broth made from a soup bone, flavored with spices, Worcestershire sauce, butter, brown flour, vermicelli, carrot, and served over mashed hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil the soup bone the day before you want to serve the soup to prepare the stock.

  2. Skim the grease off the stock the next day and melt the butter.

Make and serve the soup

  1. Add spices, Worcestershire sauce, butter, and brown flour to the stock.

  2. Stir in the vermicelli and grated carrot.

  3. Mash the hard-boiled eggs smooth and place them in a serving dish.

  4. Pour the soup over the mashed eggs.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Simmers into the stock that forms the flavor base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savory flavor to the broth.
Brown flour
Thickens the broth slightly as it cooks with the butter.
Vermicelli
Adds starch that softens in the broth and gives it body and texture.
Carrot
Adds mild sweetness and color to the soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed into the serving dish, they add soft body and richness beneath the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the grease off the stock the next day. Fat from the bones rises and sets on chilled stock, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Removing it before reheating keeps the soup from tasting greasy and gives it a clearer broth.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, flour, egg. 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.

More beef soup recipes

Clear 34Brown 23Quick 12French 6Barley 5Economical 4 See all 245 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes