Skip to main content
Main

Family Soup

A hearty beef soup made with tongue, shin, bones, and root vegetables, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the cold tongue, shin of beef, any leftover meat or bones, turnips, carrots, onions, parsnip, celery, and water in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 4 hours until the flavors are extracted from the meat.

  3. Strain the soup and let it cool.

  4. Once cooled, skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the soft parts of the tongue and diced fresh carrot, turnip, and onion.

  2. Stew until the vegetables are tender and serve with toasted 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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Onions
Build savory depth as they cook down into the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after cooling. Fat that is not removed after cooling stays in the soup as a greasy layer. Once the broth chills, the fat solidifies on the surface and can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, rice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes