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Salt Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with salt beef, vegetables, and rice or barley, seasoned with pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salt Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the required water into a saucepan.

  2. Add a few cloves and rice or barley.

  3. If using barley, boil for 2-3 hours.

  4. Finely chop any vegetables you have and add them to the soup.

  5. If using tinned meat, chop it finely and add it to the soup with the vegetables.

  6. Remove the salt beef from the pot when half done and finish cooking it in the soup.

  7. Season with pepper and add rice water if available to thicken 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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

Rice or barley
Starch that thickens the broth as it cooks and softens the soup.
Salt beef
Main meat that flavours the broth with savoury, salty richness.
Finely chopped vegetables
Add sweetness, body and aroma to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Removing the salt beef at half done. Salt beef cooked fully in the pot can become tough and stringy, and finishing it in the soup keeps it tender while the broth absorbs its flavour.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, onion, carrot, turnip, cabbage, meat, beef. 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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