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Roast Beef Soup

A soup made with a loin roast, vinegar, butter, cloves, cinnamon, flour, tomatoes, sweet cream, and optional catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Roast Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the loin roast with vinegar, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stick the cloves into the roast.

  4. Sprinkle cinnamon and sift flour over the roast.

Roast

  1. Place the roast in a deep pan or kettle with boiling water.

  2. Roast until about half done.

  3. Strain the tomatoes over the roast and finish roasting.

Finish

  1. When done, add celery salt to taste, sweet cream, and catsup if desired.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin roast
Provides the main meat, whose slow roasting in liquid makes it tender and flavorful.
Flour
Sifted over the roast, it helps the surface brown and thickens the pan juices.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the liquid around the roast, shaping the flavor of the broth.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the sharpness of the tomatoes and vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the meat's flavor and slightly tenderizes its surface.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic flavor to the crust of the roast.

The step that matters

Adding the sweet cream. Cream is rich in fat and proteins that can curdle or separate when boiled with acidic tomatoes. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring the cream in helps it stay smooth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, pepper, clove, cinnamon, flour, celery):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper, clove, cinnamon, flour, celery. 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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