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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with tomatoes, onions, turnips, carrot, herbs, and optional pasta or dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the shin of beef in a kettle with enough water to cover it for about four hours until tender.

  2. Remove the beef from the liquid and add salt, tomatoes, onions, turnips, carrot, sugar, marjoram, thyme, red pepper, and celery.

  3. Thicken the soup with vermicelli, macaroni, noodles, or drop dumplings as desired.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Beef shin
Gives the broth its rich, meaty flavour and, as it cooks slowly, becomes tender.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth, balancing the richness of the beef.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and depth as they soften in the broth.
Turnips
Soften during long cooking and add mild, earthy sweetness to the soup.
Sugar
Rounds out the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.
Vermicelli, macaroni, or noodles
Optional pasta that thickens the soup and adds bulk as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer the beef until fully tender before adding vegetables. Beef shin is full of connective tissue that only breaks down into tender, gelatinous meat after long, gentle cooking. Adding vegetables before the meat is tender can leave the beef tough and the vegetables overcooked.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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