Name: Beef Soup
Ingredients: 1 hock of beef; 12 white potatoes; 3 carrots, finely chopped; 2 onions; 1 turnip; a little celery (optional); salt and pepper to taste

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 ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Boil the hock of beef in water for 3 hours.
Add the potatoes, carrots, onions, turnip, and celery.
Boil for another hour.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

Remove the beef and serve it separately on a dish.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hock of beef: Long simmering releases flavor and body into the broth.
Potatoes: Their starch thickens the broth and makes the soup hearty.
Carrots: Add gentle sweetness and color to the broth.
Onions: Add savory depth and sweetness as they cook down.
Turnip: Adds mild sweetness and bulk to the soup.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, carrot, onion, turnip, pepper):

Parsleyfits about as well
Celerythe original
Thymefits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well

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