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Cheap Soup

A hearty beef soup with peas, potatoes, rice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Cheap Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the beef and water in a large pot.

  2. Add the peas, potatoes, rice, and salt.

  3. Boil gently until the mixture is reduced to 4 pints.

  4. Stir in fried cabbage or puree the soup and serve with fried bread.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

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

  4. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides savory meat flavor and substance to the soup as it simmers.
Peas
Thicken the broth as they break down and add body and earthy sweetness.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and help thicken the soup with their starch.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and adds body, thickening the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil gently until reduced to 4 pints. A gentle simmer lets the peas and potatoes soften and release starch slowly, thickening the soup evenly. A hard boil can break up the ingredients unevenly and scorch the bottom of the pot.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, rice. 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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