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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with potatoes, cabbage, corn, onions, celery, tomatoes, and optional forcemeat and egg balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the cracked joints of beef in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil and skim the surface.

  3. Reduce heat and let the pot simmer slowly, covered, until the meat is thoroughly cooked.

  4. Once cooled, remove the fat that hardens on top of the soup.

Add the vegetables

  1. Peel, wash, and slice the potatoes. Add the sliced potatoes to the soup.

  2. Shred the cabbage. Add the shredded cabbage, green corn, onions, celery, and tomatoes (if desired) to the soup.

  3. Simmer the soup slowly, ensuring it does not burn.

  4. Strain the soup if preferred.

Make the forcemeat and egg balls

  1. For forcemeat balls, mix chopped beef, egg, butter, bread-crumbs, salt, and pepper. Moisten the mixture with water from the stewed meat. Form the mixture into balls. Fry the balls until brown.

  2. For egg-balls, mash boiled egg yolks. Mix the mashed yolks with a raw yolk and flour. Season the mixture. Form the mixture into balls.

Serve

  1. Drop the egg-balls into the soup just before serving. Serve 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked joints of beef
Provides the main meat flavor and gelatin that gives the broth body.
Potatoes
Add starch that thickens the soup slightly and adds bulk.
White cabbage
Adds mild sweetness and substance to the soup as it simmers.
Chopped beef
Binds with egg and crumbs to form tender, savory forcemeat balls.
Egg yolks
Enrich the egg-balls, adding richness and helping them hold together.
Bread-crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat balls a lighter, tender texture.

The step that matters

Frying the forcemeat balls until brown. Browning through frying creates savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Cooking too briefly leaves them pale and bland, while overcooking dries them out.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, cabbage, corn, onion, celery, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, cabbage, corn, onion, celery, parsley. 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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