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Cream of Beef Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, beef extract, salt, pepper, and a beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  2. Add the extract of beef and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Just before serving, beat the whole egg and stir it into 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup and carries the beef flavour.
Whole egg
Thickens the soup slightly and adds richness when stirred in gently at the end.
Extract of beef
Provides the concentrated beef flavour that defines the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg. Egg proteins set with heat, so adding beaten egg to very hot milk can curdle it into lumps. Adding it just before serving, while stirring, helps it blend smoothly into the soup.

“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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