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Beef Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with a beef bone, assorted vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the soup bone in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and let it simmer slowly, skimming off any foam.

  3. One hour before serving, add the chopped cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrots, tomato, celery, onion, and corn.

  4. Add the chopped meat from the soup bone, season with salt, pepper, and cloves.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Soup bone
Gives the broth its meaty flavor as it simmers slowly in water.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Carrots
Add sweetness and hold their shape through the long simmer.
Cabbage
Adds body and mild sweetness, becoming tender as it cooks in the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, turnip, carrot, tomato, celery, onion, corn):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, turnip, carrot, tomato, celery, onion, corn. 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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