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Beef and Tapioca Broth

A hearty soup of beef, tapioca, parsley, onion, and seasonings, finished with a poached egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef and Tapioca Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Soak the beef in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the beef slowly, covered, for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. In the last 30 minutes, add the soaked tapioca, parsley, and onion.

  2. Remove the parsley and onion before serving.

  3. Season with a little pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Just before serving, add a poached egg to the soup.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the savory flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Tapioca
Thickens the broth as its starch swells and softens during cooking.
Egg
Adds richness and soft protein to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil the beef slowly, covered, for 2 hours. A gentle, covered simmer keeps the broth clear and tenderizes the beef, while a hard rolling boil would make the broth cloudy and the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg. 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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