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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with marrow, vegetables, and barley, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef shin bone into short pieces to expose the marrow.

  2. Wash the pieces in cold water.

  3. Rub the meat with ½ tablespoon salt and ½ tablespoon pepper.

  4. Place the meat in a pot with 4 quarts of water.

Simmer the soup

  1. Bring to a boil over medium heat and skim off any scum that rises.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Skim again.

  4. Add the carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, potatoes, and pearl barley.

  5. Cover and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  6. Add ½ tablespoon salt.

  7. Add a thickening made from 1 tablespoon flour mixed with ½ cup water and stir it in.

  8. Cover and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the bones.

  2. Serve the meat on a dish garnished with parsley.

  3. Accompany with mustard and ketchup.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin bone
Its marrow and connective tissue enrich the broth with body and savory flavor during long simmering.
Pearl barley
Releases starch as it cooks, adding body and thickness to the soup.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch, giving the soup substance and a mild sweetness.
Wheat flour
Mixed with water and stirred in, it thickens the broth by gelatinizing its starch.

The step that matters

Stir the flour thickening into the simmering soup. Flour mixed with water must be stirred in well and cooked, or it clumps and leaves a raw floury taste. Starch needs heat to swell and thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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