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Beef-soup

A hearty soup of beef, rice, vegetables, and eggs thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the beef, rice, and enough water to cover the beef.

  2. Stew over moderate heat for four hours.

  3. One hour before it's done, add the onions, potatoes, and carrots if desired.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and flour.

  2. Drop the mixture into the soup with a spoon, or add broken slices of bread to the tureen.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main flavour and richness as it stews into the broth.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during long simmering.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens and gives the soup body.
Eggs
Set when dropped into the hot soup, forming soft dumpling-like pieces.
Flour
Gives the egg mixture structure so it holds together in the broth.

The step that matters

Dropping the egg mixture into the soup. The soup must be at a hot simmer when the egg and flour mixture goes in. If it is too cool, the mixture disperses rather than setting into clean pieces, and flour added without enough heat can taste raw.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, onion, potato, pepper, egg, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, onion, potato, pepper, egg, milk. 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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