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Meat Soups

A hearty beef soup made with onions, carrots, turnip, cloves, salt, and water, simmered slowly for over an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Meat Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with sliced onions.

  2. Layer the beef slices and chopped bone on top.

  3. Add the carrot, turnip, and cloves.

Brown and simmer

  1. Set the stewpan on a gentle fire for 10 minutes, shaking occasionally.

  2. After 10 minutes, reduce to a slow fire for over an hour until a blackish glaze forms.

  3. Fill the stewpan with cold water and add salt.

  4. When boiling, reduce heat and let it simmer gently for about an hour, skimming off fat and scum.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Onions
Caramelise slowly on the base of the pan, adding sweetness and a deep colour to the broth.
Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water during long, gentle cooking, giving the soup body.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Slow glazing before adding water. The beef and onions must darken slowly over low heat until a blackish glaze forms on the pan. This caramelisation builds colour and savoury flavour. Rushing it on high heat scorches the sugars and leaves a bitter taste.

Swap the clove

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

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

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