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Ground Meat Soup

A hearty soup made with ground beef, cabbage, onions, carrots, potatoes, rice, tomatoes, peas, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Ground Meat Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Grind the beef, cabbage, onions, and carrots together.

  2. Place the mixture in a soup kettle and boil gently for one hour.

  3. Add the ground potatoes and soaked rice, then cook for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the tomatoes, peas, and chopped parsley.

  2. Let the soup simmer for half an hour.

  3. Season well and serve.

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. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  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

Ground beef
Provides savory flavor and body to the soup as it cooks.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it softens in the broth.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly and adds starchy body as it cooks.
Potatoes
Break down partly as they cook, adding starch that thickens the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, potato, rice, tomato, peas):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, potato, rice, tomato, peas. 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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