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Beef Soup

A hearty beef broth with turnips, carrots, celery, onions, herbs, and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 broth

  1. Crack the bone of the shin of beef and place it in a pot with 4 quarts of water and 4 teaspoons of coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil for 2 hours, skimming the surface regularly.

  3. Add the turnips, onions, carrots, celery, and tied sweet herbs.

  4. When the vegetables are tender, remove the meat and strain the soup back into the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the soup with a little flour mixed with water.

  2. Add chopped parsley, and season with more salt and pepper to taste.

  3. For the dumplings, mix 2 teaspoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour and moisten with a little water or milk.

  4. Drop the dumplings into the boiling soup and let them cook for 5 minutes before serving.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and savory flavour into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during cooking.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness in the broth as they cook down.
Flour
Thickens the soup and forms the base of the dumplings.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the dumplings, keeping them tender.

The step that matters

Dropping the dumplings into the soup. The soup must be at a steady boil when the dumplings go in, so they cook through and rise rather than sinking into a cool, heavy liquid. Lowering the heat too early can leave them dense and doughy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, celery, flour, milk, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, celery, flour, milk, butter. 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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