Skip to main content
Main

Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with hind shin, onions, carrots, turnips, parsley, celery, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Cut the meat from the bone of the hind shin of beef and wash it clean.

  2. Place the meat in a pot and sprinkle with black pepper and salt.

Make the soup

  1. Add chopped onions, carrots, and turnips.

  2. Pour in 3 quarts of water and cover the pot.

  3. Boil gently for 3 hours, skimming off any scum.

  4. Add parsley and celery for flavor.

  5. Stir in a little browned flour to thicken the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in a soup tureen and pour the soup and vegetables over it.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hind shin of beef
Gives the soup its meaty flavor, and its bone and connective tissue enrich the broth during long simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery sweetness and soft texture to the vegetables.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth and adds a toasted, deeper flavor and color.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 hours, skimming off any scum. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and the meat tender, while a hard boil makes the liquid cloudy and can toughen the meat. Skimming removes impurities that rise to the surface.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, flour. 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.

More beef soup recipes

Clear 34Brown 23Quick 12French 6Barley 5Economical 4 See all 245 →

You might also like

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