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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with hock, onions, carrots, potatoes, and optional dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the hock of beef in a large pot for 4–5 hours.

  2. Skim off the scum and add the whole onions.

  3. When nearly done, cut the meat from the bone into small pieces and return it to the pot.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sweet herbs.

  5. Add sliced carrots and potatoes.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. Mix part potato with flour to make dumplings.

  2. Shape the dumpling mixture into small pieces.

  3. Boil the dumplings for 15–20 minutes.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Hock of beef
Gives the broth its rich, meaty flavour as it simmers for hours.
Whole onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the broth during long simmering.
Potatoes
Thicken the broth slightly as they break down and add body.
Flour
Binds the potato mixture so the dumplings hold their shape while boiling.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Foam that rises early contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, potato, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, potato, flour. 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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